Clown Town

PART ONE HANDS ON

What you see when you see a blank page is much what you hear when you hear white noise; it’s the early shifting into gear of something not ready to happen—an echo of what you feel when you walk past sights the eyes are blind to: bus queues, whitewashed shopfronts, adverts pasted to lamp-posts, or a four-storey block on Aldersgate Street in the London borough of Finsbury, where the premises gracing the pavement include a Chinese restaurant with ever-lowered shutters and a faded menu taped to its window; a down-at-heel newsagent’s where pallets of off-brand cola cans block the aisle; and, between the two, a weathered black door with a dusty milk bottle welded to its step, and an air of neglect suggesting that it never opens, never closes. Should anyone look up, they’d see the legend w. w. henderson, solicitor and commissioner for oaths lettered in gilt on a window; might notice, too, the way the establishments comprising this block are distinguished by the varying discoloration of their façades, like the spines of books on disregarded shelves. But books, unlike spies, can’t be judged by their covers, and there’s no call for the busy pedestrian to pass sentence on this cluster of properties, which sits in one of those marginal spaces cities collect, then dump on disregarded streets or in corners never seen in daylight. London teems with them. In each of its boroughs you’ll pass such buildings, resisting examination; squat—windowless—drab—and walking by them is like remembering a rainy Sunday from the seventies, triggering something that’s almost boredom, almost pain, but never quite either.

It’s a momentary sensation, quickly shrugged off. Pedestrians shake their heads as if reminded of a minor chore they’ve been avoiding—unwashed laundry, an unread novel—and shuffle by, unaware that the anonymous structures in their wake are identified on maps, if at all, as “government buildings,” or that they house the secret servants of the state; that behind their walls the sharpest minds available are gathering intel, fabricating data, forecasting outcomes and analysing threats, when they’re not playing Candy Crush and watching the clock like the rest of us. There are armed guards behind unmarked doors; there are cameras scrutinising pavements, sentries studying screens. It’s thrillingly like a thriller. Sometimes—rarely—it might only have happened once—there’ll be action: A car will scream to a halt, a door will burst open. Figures in black with holstered weaponry will pour from the building and be whipped away. Later that same day you’ll see nothing about this on the news, and will struggle to remember precisely where it happened; being certain only that, wherever it was, it wasn’t Aldersgate Street, where little disrupts the daily round of not much going on. The Chinese restaurant remains closed for long stretches; the newsagent’s enjoys limited custom. Meanwhile, the black front door between them remains shut, and anyone foolish enough to seek entry must do so via a back alley, where a yard in which wheelie bins lurk like corpulent hoodlums also reveals, like an admission of guilt, a door which sticks in all weathers, and once forced open betrays nothing more high-tech than a staircase, lined with wallpaper peeling in some places and already peeled in others. A single dim lightbulb casts half-hearted shadows, and should you ascend the stairs you would find on each landing a pair of offices, neither inviting. The carpeting is scuffed; the skirting boards warp from the walls. There is evidence of murine activity, but even this seems ancient, as if the mice responsible packed their bags for pastures new years ago. If there were a lift, it would have long stopped working. If there were hope, it would have left. For if the murkiest of London’s depths are where its spooks congregate, Slough House—this being the name of the Aldersgate Street residence—is the lowest of the low; an administrative oubliette where the benighted moulder in misery. Their careers are behind them, though not all have admitted it; their triumphs are black laughter in the dark. Their duties involve the kind of paperwork designed to drive those undertaking it mad; paperwork with no clear objective and no end in sight, designed by someone who abandoned a course in labyrinth design in favour of something more uplifting, like illustrating suicide notes. The light in the building leaks away through cracks and fissures, and the air is heavy with regret. To arrive here for work every morning is its own punishment, one made harsher by the awareness that it’s self-inflicted—because all the inmates need do to win freedom is claim it. No one will stop them walking away. Indeed, there’s every reason to suppose that such a move would meet with admiration, or at any rate, a sigh of relief. Some employees are more trouble than they’re worth, and after various adventures involving poor choices, idiot politics, appalling weather and violent death, it’s fair to say that the slow horses fall into this category. It’s not that they wouldn’t be missed, more that they’d happily be forgotten. Whatever space they occupy on the map might more usefully be rendered a blank white nothing.

Though of course, blank spaces on maps are an invitation to the curious, just as empty white pages are a temptation to those with nothing better to do. In the drabbest of buildings, home to the dullest of spooks, stories wait to be told. And in Slough House—on Aldersgate Street—in the London borough of Finsbury—this happens the way it has always happened. One syllable at a time.

“A letter?”

“Or an email.”

“That’s twice as fucking bad. You want me to write an email?”

“Don’t think of it as a punishment, Shirley. Think of it as smoothing things over.”

“Yeah, right. Have you met me?”

Catherine blinked, pursed her lips, and decided to leave it there.

“Just think about it. Please. That’s all I’m asking.”

She turned and went up two flights of stairs, a manila folder clutched to her chest: protective colouring. Not that she required this—in some moods, on some days, she could walk past anyone in Slough House bar Jackson Lamb, and they wouldn’t know she was there—but it was an ingrained habit, having a visible alibi in case of interrogation: Where are you going? What will you do when you get there? It was the recovering addict’s companion, Jiminy Cricket with powers of arrest.

These days Catherine Standish listened when her conscience twittered, even if the bad decisions it informed her of were being made by others. In Slough House, it was Shirley Dander picking up the slack. Shirley’s weapons of self-destruction might not be those Catherine had chosen—a traditionalist, it had been alcohol all the way for her—but that was a detail, and Shirley was impressively single-minded when it came to creating havoc. Her recent attempt at detoxification, for instance, had resulted in mass casualties at the Service-run facility she’d been sent to, an episode Catherine had been hoping to resolve with her suggestion that Shirley write to the manager offering words of regret. Shirley, though, had other ideas, predominant among them being that everyone should fuck off and leave her alone. Detoxification, in Catherine’s experience, had been about facing her demons. Sooner than wrestle with those, Shirley would prefer a televised cage-fighting event with everyone else’s.

A simple letter. It couldn’t have hurt.

Probably never know, though. She had enough experience of Shirley to be sure that, having drawn her line in the sand, she’d not let the sea itself wash it away without a fight.

Not for the first time, Catherine wondered what life might be like in a less obstreperous workplace; somewhere whose occupants were prepared to leaven their take with a little give. Pointless fretting about what-ifs, though. Here was where she was, and—Jiminy Cricket be damned—she had to let others work through their own issues. Shirley would do that or not; she’d make it or she wouldn’t. Entering her office, the one space of tidy calm in the noisy mess that was Slough House, Catherine allowed herself to shrug off her self-appointed role as mother hen, and accept a reality she spent too much time avoiding: that it didn’t matter whether Shirley made it, because there’d always be someone ready to crash and burn. The best Catherine could do was deal with the damage, not attempt its avoidance. Because damage was inevitable—her colleagues’ impulsive behaviours made sure of that.

Though it had always been true, of course, that some of them were more aware of this than others.

Three little words.

Hot. Girl. Summer.

Roddy Ho was having one of those.

And don’t talk to him about best-laid plans, dude, because all he’d hear was “laid.” So mark your calendars: The next few months would play like self-replicating code—you knew what was coming but watched it happen anyway, because, shit, well, because. What more reason did you need?

Of course, you also helped the process along, because that was the difference between being a doer and being did.

So yesterday, Roddy had got himself inked.

Truth was, he’d been meaning to get a tat for ages. It was today’s art form, and with a gallery like Roddy, it’d be criminal to leave the walls bare. Besides, it was a means of communication, and Roddy was all about the comms. Give a dude a tat, it saved you having to get to know him. One look gave you the lowdown, which in the Rodster’s case came to three little words again: simple, classical, beautiful.

Put it another way, a hummingbird.

Which was the stuff of poetry, you didn’t have to read poetry to know that. Hummingbirds were the Roddy Hos of the avian world: compact, powerful, super-intelligent, and capable of lifting many times their own weight. Some of these facts he’d already known, but the guy with the needle had told him the rest. Put all that together and you basically had Roddy’s spiritual equal. Chicks were going to crap themselves, in a good way. Like he said, hot girl summer.

(True, he hadn’t actually seen it yet—it was still under a bandage—but the needle guy had told him, “That’s the best damn art I’ve made in years,” before binding it up and saying not to let air hit it for twenty-four hours.)

So Roddy was just awaiting the moment of reveal, which it was tempting to put on TikTok—grab himself some viral attention—but the squares at Regent’s Park kept circulating memos about social media, and Roddy didn’t need The Man on his back. Dude: He followed Kanye on X.

But tomorrow, or day after at the latest, he’d be open for viewing: roll up, take a seat, marvel.

He patted his arm, yelped, then looked round to make sure no one had heard, but he was alone in the office because Lech Wicinski had taken to squatting elsewhere, on account of Ho’s room smells of pizza, and I can hear Ho’s music through his earphones, and Ho ran me over in his car, which had been totes accidental. Anyway, it hadn’t been a yelp, more an . . . involuntary spasm. Outdone by his own reflexes. Some days, being Roddy was a struggle.

More gently he stroked his bandaged arm again. Hot girl summer or not, there were moments you had to be your own wingman, but that was okay.

If there was one thing Roddy was used to, it was being his own best friend.

Sentence me to life, thought Lech Wicinski. Or sentence me to death. But not to this halfway state, neither one thing nor the other . . .

Sunshine was falling on Aldersgate Street, and London was boasting its version of summer, with traffic noises for birdsong and brickwork for grassy meadow, though at least the digging up of nearby pavements to no discernible purpose was over. Inside, however, Slough House remained the dark side of Narnia: always winter, never Christmas. There was nothing to celebrate in Lech’s workload, either. The task to which he was currently assigned—and currently had a swirling momentum to it, an actual tidal force; currently meant he’d been doing it for as long as he could remember—was one he’d inherited from River Cartwright, when River had been Novichoked just this side of death. The safe house folder. What Lech was doing was cross-checking electoral rolls and census results against council tax bills and utility usage, in an attempt to determine whether supposedly occupied properties were in fact standing empty, potential hideaways for bad actors. A task to which River had applied himself with all the vigour he’d displayed while lying in a coma.

Which—lying in a coma—was about the only thing that hadn’t happened to Lech lately. Two years’ bad luck had snatched away the life he’d planned and left his face looking like someone had played noughts and crosses on the same grid, repeatedly. Instead of living with his fiancée and looking forward to tomorrow, he was alone in a rented flat that swallowed most of his salary, and setting off each morning to Slough House. So maybe he should quit before he was any more behind, and find a new life to pursue. But his face might as well have gone ten rounds with a sewing machine, and the only reference he could expect from the Service would be one hinting at dodgy online activities—lies, but they struck deep, and no employer would look at him twice. There was a way out of all of this. He simply hadn’t found it yet. Meanwhile, he’d been staring at the same screen for thirteen minutes, and when he tried to scroll down discovered it had frozen, and wouldn’t let him leave. This might have been some kind of metaphor, but was more likely just fucked-up IT. Welcome to Slough House, he thought, and left Louisa’s office, which he’d colonised to avoid Roddy Ho, and went to boil the kettle instead.

Second paragraph in, the story turned nasty.

Derek Flint, who but for the grace of God and the good sense of the electorate might have been sitting in the London Mayor’s office today, is rumoured to be under investigation by the Met. The Diary understands that irregularities in Flint’s election funding are the cause of this inconvenience.

Flint’s mentor, guru and éminence noir is, of course, Peter Judd, for whom accounting irregularities are hardly a novelty. Since the failure of his pet pol at the polls, Judd has been keeping a low profile. Long may it continue.

Okay, not as nasty as Judd deserved, but still.

Diana Taverner binned the newspaper. Whoever was doing her lackeying—turnover was high—would retrieve it for recycling in due course; meanwhile, she’d enjoy Judd’s failure for a moment, even if the bigger picture, the one in which he had her in a stranglehold, remained undimmed. Judd might no longer occupy a great office of state, and even he had presumably come to accept that he never would again, but his unwavering belief in his innate superiority would doubtless be unstymied by this latest setback. Despite—or perhaps because of—his lack of moral compass, he always found another direction to head in. As for Flint, Judd would already have consigned him to the swing bin of politics. Loyalty was a marketing ploy: If it didn’t get you your tenth cup of coffee free, it was wasted effort.

And she had to admit a certain attraction to Judd’s attitude, particularly when it came to glazing over reversals. She could do with a little of that herself. A career spent running Regent’s Park was inevitably more stained by failure than garlanded by success, because when a threat to the nation was stubbed out few got to hear about it, but when a bomb went off on a weekday bus, the whole world held its breath. Besides, success could shade into its opposite. The victory that had meant most to her—an under-the-bridge act of vengeance, funded with Judd’s help—had long since curdled, her triumph ruined by the discovery that Judd’s PR firm was bankrolled by Chinese money, meaning that Taverner herself was left holding one end of a chain of firecrackers which, if lit, would not only burn down her career but leave the Park a charred smoky ruin. In some circumstances, the knowledge that applying a match would destroy both parties might be a source of comfort, but the concept of mutually assured destruction didn’t apply when one of the two considered himself fireproof. The time would come when Judd would act. He didn’t even have to see advantage for himself in the prospect. He simply had to be bored.

That knowledge buzzed in Taverner’s background day and night. Like having a neighbour with a floorboard sander, and no boundaries.

Intermittently, though, since a recent email, the buzzing had faltered, as if she were either learning to live with it or starting to glimpse a way of pulling its plug.

The email—delivered to her personal address, known by few—had been anonymous, but not for long: While the principal reason for her being its recipient was that she was First Desk, its sender had evidently overlooked the fact that this gave her certain resources, and his attempts to cover his tracks gave little bother to Taverner’s IT crew. The attachment that came with it, though, she had kept to herself, and listening repeatedly to its scratchy recording of mostly forgotten voices, she had reflected on how often the past could blow a hole through a squeaky-clean future. The new government had set out its stall in what it claimed was a bright fresh marketplace, but the same sad song was on the jukebox. Meet the new gang. Same as the old gang.

On the desk in front of her lay a thin sheaf of papers: personnel files, printed from an unused workstation with a temporary password that expired at midnight, its usage-report deleted. It wouldn’t be impossible to determine that Taverner herself had accessed the material, but it would take active investigation, and it would be a foolhardy underling that attempted anything of that sort. Four of the files were labelled Inactive, but the fifth, though not the slenderest, was relatively recent: River Cartwright, one of Jackson Lamb’s slow horses. Already she was having doubts about this choice, but a new detail, appended since Cartwright’s medical misadventure, offered hope. A lesson of leadership she’d long since absorbed: Always read between the lines. Having done that, she dealt with the paperwork in the time-honoured way. There was constant chatter, in all lines of business, about what was truly the key to success: integrity, foresight, the ability to improvise. What nobody mentioned was a shredder.

Her phone chirruped with upcoming appointments: a meeting with the Limitations Committee, and an afternoon session with the Home Secretary—the daily round continued; she was calm, she was in control. It wasn’t so long since she’d contrived to have her bodyguard carry out an assassination, and she’d maintained that same air then, too. No one could know about the buzzing in her background, or guess the lengths she would go to silence it. And whatever way she found to do so, no trail would lead back to her.

“Paging River Cartwright.”

“. . . Huh?”

“Hate to disturb you. But I was wondering what planet you’re on.”

River blinked. Earth. He was on earth.

Not something he took for granted lately. When he’d put his hand on that toxic-swabbed door handle—how long ago was that?—he’d nearly crossed a graver threshold too, and joined his grandfather in the afterlife; not the one where you sat bathed in heavenly light while a choir hummed ecstasies in the background, but the one where you were buried in cold hard ground and that was that. In earth, rather than on it. A future that had brushed him on its way past, and would one day make good on its promise. This time, though, River’s death had been temporary: an induced coma lasting nine days, during which, he’d been told, his body had been a battleground on which medical science had slugged it out with the mad bastard variety, and thankfully won, though not without cost. He had a lost winter behind him; months off work, and an uphill struggle regaining his strength, not to mention his powers of concentration.

He was here, in the kitchen of the flat he shared with Sid Baker. They were eating breakfast, or that was the theory. An unfinished slice of toast sat on his plate. Some mornings, he had no appetite.

“. . . Sorry.”

“Interesting email?”

His phone was in his hands, true, and that was what had started his spiralling descent. But it took a moment to gather himself. “From that researcher. The one in Oxford?”

“Who’s sorting out your grandfather’s library.” Sid knew all about the O.B.’s library; she’d spent weeks living there, hiding from her own close encounter with death, nesting on cushions like a child in a storybook.

“She’s been looking at that video I made—”

“The one of me sleeping.”

“The one of my grandfather’s study, yeah—”

“Which was mostly me sleeping.”

“Which makes it sound way creepier than it was, which was just me filming my grandfather’s bookshelves, and happening to include a moment of you sleeping. And she’s been using it as a . . . catalogue, to make sure none of the books got lost in transit. And so she can shelve them in the same order he did.”

“That matters?”

“Does to her. Or that’s what she’s doing anyway, in case it mattered to him.”

Which it might have done. True, it was a fantastical notion, straight out of Dan Brown or Scooby-Doo, but on the other hand, the O.B.—who, with his late wife, Rose, had raised River—had been Regent’s Park’s strategist par excellence, and had spent his adult life steering the ship of state security through historically choppy waters. He’d never been First Desk, but he’d stood at the elbow of several who had been, pointing out changes in the weather. Something of a teddy bear, those who didn’t know him had liked to think; a reliable sounding board, but lacking the edge that might have taken him to the highest office. Others, more mathematically inclined, counted instead the years he’d spent as trusted adviser, coming up with a figure far higher than most First Desks managed, First Desks being notoriously vulnerable to the workings of events, not to mention the machinations of their subordinates. Besides, teddy bears weren’t the companionable pushovers they were taken to be. It wasn’t fun and games they planned at their picnics; it was long-term strategies for consolidating positions of influence. Nor were their objectives achieved wearing furry mittens. In recent years River had come to understand that his grandfather’s hands, which he’d first seen tending his flowerbeds, had been soiled by more than garden waste.

Meanwhile, River was still looking at the email from Oxford. “Anyway, apparently there’s a book missing.”

“Stop the bloody clocks! A missing book? Shall I call the Park?”

“You can laugh—”

“Am doing.”

“And I’d join in, if that’s all it was, a missing book. Could have been lost when the study was packed up, or been put in the wrong box and sent into storage with the furniture, or, I dunno, a hundred other things. It was a bit chaotic, I imagine.”

Imagination being all he had to go on, having been comatose at the time.

“So it’s not just missing,” said Sid. “That’s what you’re saying.”

“Yeah,” said River. “Apparently this book, which is there on the film I took?”

“It’s a rare and valuable volume?”

“No,” said River. “It doesn’t exist.”

A chapter of accidents, that was the phrase. A series of unfortunate events.

If Shirley were a TV show—which obviously she was not—but if she were, now would be a good moment for a “Previously on Shirley Dander” segment.

Decking a harasser at Regent’s Park; exile to Slough House; Marcus. Running up the stairs at the Needle—that had been a killer. The gunfight out west, at the underground complex, and Marcus again, this time dead. The penguin-assassins’ UK tour, and that moment in the church when she thought she’d be crushed to death (didn’t happen). Wales in the snow, and J. K. Coe lying under a tree like a discarded Christmas decoration. Hunting stalkers at Old Street roundabout; thumping a bus on Wimbledon Common. A week in the San, supposed to be a time of calm reflection, ending with a battle royale, a road trip with a former First Desk, and a showdown in a car wash with a helmeted hooligan. It would be fair to say there were both ups and downs in that lot. Though ups were getting harder to locate, and more expensive to maintain. And the downs—best not to dwell on the downs.

All of which left her here, in her office, having just been read, yeah, chapter again: chapter and verse by St. Catherine of Standish, patron saint of addicts. Who had herself graduated from the San with full honours, and obviously regarded Shirley’s truncated experience of its rehabilitative wonders as some kind of moral failure, so fuck that. What she really needed, leaving aside all the bollocks inherent in what others thought she needed, was to be left alone for a while; a little solitude (the odd pickup apart) and some clean living, with maybe the odd toot for variety’s sake—it was relaxation, not canonisation, she wanted. A few weeks of that and she’d be ready for anything Slough House could throw at her, even including her current task, which involved an online trawl for youths exhibiting antisocial tendencies in specific postcodes, these centring on mosques identified by Regent’s Park as being “of special interest” . . . Well, she could imagine Lamb saying. You have to start somewhere. He had the notion, or pretended to, that it ought to be possible to identify those undergoing radicalisation not so much by their youthful careers of hooliganism as by those same careers being abruptly curtailed. Redemption, in Lamb’s world, was less likely than the chances of being recruited by the forces of evil, forces which would prefer you kept your nose clean for the moment.

None of which had any relevance to her own situation, obviously.

She leaned forward and tapped at her keyboard to dispel the screensaver but her computer had switched itself off, its usual response to being ignored for more than five minutes. She could boot up again, but on the other hand it was less than two hours to lunchtime, so she might as well just sit it out. Coming up next on Shirley Dander: fuck all. She leaned back in her chair, closed her eyes, and wondered if she were the only one in the building who had no real plans at all. Maybe. Maybe not. Time would tell. It usually did.

Book restaurant.

The memo was fixed to her monitor’s upper corner, but she’d avoided acting on it yet.

Things Louisa had accomplished so far this morning included, pretty much exclusively, opening her window, through which now drifted the sounds of ordinary things, all of which had happened a million times before. Buses wheezed, traffic snorted, an airliner bulldozed its way through a temporarily cloudless sky. White noise, leaving no trace behind. On her windowsill lay two dead bluebottles, half a moth, and the scattered debris of city dirt, the kind that accumulates unseen, until it’s suddenly a landfill site. Underfoot was threadbare carpeting; on the walls a dull shade of paint that had long given up its proprietorial singularity—November Frost? Autumn Lawn?—in favour of a universal beige. The space between felt like it was held prisoner by the 1970s. The shelving on the walls remained there largely through inertia, and the mismatched desks—her own kept level thanks to a folded piece of cardboard; the other with a surface scarred by the penknife lacerations of a previous bored resident, and both with drawers that didn’t open easily, or wouldn’t shut—might have started life in a more salubrious corner of the civil service, but were now a decade or more past their useful working life. Not unlike—but she held off completing the thought.

That other desk, the scarred and battle-worn one, had been commandeered by Lech Wicinski lately, but had belonged to Min Harper once, what felt like fifteen years ago, and she still imagined him there occasionally, balanced on its edge or standing by the window, like an overgrown schoolboy gazing at the playing fields. Min Min Min. Oddly, he spoke to her now.

You going to make that reservation?

She hadn’t decided yet.

What’s to decide? An old friend seeking your company? Not even a date, as such. Just . . . friendship.

Maybe. Maybe not.

Min wasn’t there, of course, and even if he had been was unlikely to offer useful commentary on her options. He’d not been the most reliable source of advice while alive. It was unlikely he’d improved in that area since his death.

Still, he wasn’t shutting up.

And it’s not as if you’re doing anything else this evening.

Yeah, thanks for that.

She made a pistol of her fingers, shot Min’s ghost dead, and felt bad.

But he was right, she had nothing else on. And it shouldn’t be a big decision, an evening out with an old . . . friend? Barely. They’d had someone in common, no more, and she wasn’t sure there was a word for that. For him to reach out after all this time suggested he was after more than a nostalgic evening. Choose wherever. My treat. His words, so he’d obviously come up in the world. Whereas she remained on the same page.

Perhaps that was why she was havering. An evening spent basking in someone else’s progress: Did that sound like fun? Hearing about professional success, worldly advancement, while she looked forward to turning up here tomorrow, to an unswept windowsill? Except none of that sounded like Devon Welles, whom she’d known when he was one of the Park’s Dogs; a friend to Emma Flyte—a good character reference—who’d left the Park after she’d been fired, another indicator of decency. Not the type to spend an evening boasting to a former colleague. No: He was after something else. And it was possible this might turn out to her advantage.

He’s your ticket out of here.

Which wasn’t Min speaking, but might as well have been, being about as grounded in reality as he ever got. What did Welles have to offer her? And why was she overthinking this, anyway? Pick up the phone, book a restaurant. It wasn’t rocket science.

The Post-it note on which she’d scribbled the reminder fluttered for no obvious reason, and she thought goose on my grave. From overhead came a wheezing sound, which might be Slough House expressing its weariness, or Lamb expressing himself. Either way, it was not a reminder of how delightful these precincts were. The days were stacking up like dirty dishes, and each had been packed with moments like this, the kind where you look round and wonder how you got here, and why you haven’t left yet. For the longest time, she’d thought—like every slow horse before her—that this was a temporary glitch; that Regent’s Park would take her back once she’d proved herself. She no longer believed that. So why was she still here? It wasn’t the décor. It certainly wasn’t the company. And no, she wasn’t doing anything tonight. She plucked the Post-it from her monitor, screwed it up and tossed it into the waste basket, nearly.

Then took her phone out and began googling restaurants.

On the shelf, Ashley. On. The. Shelf. You want to spend your whole life there?

Yes, Mum.

Because you’re going about it the right way.

I said—never mind.

Because it didn’t matter what she said: Once The Lecture began, it would keep right on happening until it was over. Estimates varied, but Ashley Khan figured she could write off the next ten minutes. Just keep her phone jammed to her ear, and if anyone appeared, pretend she was busy. In Slough House, pretending to be working was so much part of the agenda, it counted as working.

None of which she could interrupt her mother to explain, because apart from not knowing Ash had been booted out of Regent’s Park and exiled to this shitheap, she also didn’t know Ash had been at Regent’s Park in the first place, and if she had would have assumed it was the offices of the security firm Ash claimed to be employed by, rather than the headquarters of the UK’s intelligence service. All of which would require more than a ten-minute call to set right. Simpler all round to keep listening to The Lecture, with its familiar arc in which her mother went grandchildless to the grave while she—Ash—wasted the best years of her life. Meanwhile, in front of her was her ongoing project. This will keep you out of mischief. A pile of paper eight inches thick, and yes, don’t even bother: paper? It was out of some old Harry Potter book. When Catherine had carried it in, Ash had just stared, not sure whether she was supposed to laugh or cry. I mean, this is data? It needed someone walking in front of it waving a red flag. You could literally have an accident moving it from one place to another. What was saddest was, Catherine spent all day every day doing precisely that. The woman had no idea. Ash should introduce her to her mother.

Who was now telling her, I know it’s not fashionable to say so, but you do have to give some thought to what boys are interested in.

Actually, thought Ash—speaking from experience, plus a lifetime spent online—what boys were interested in, what men were after, was the same two things, one being blow jobs and the other an audience, to fill the time between blow jobs. If she really wanted to send her mother grandchildless to the grave, delivering that information would get the job done without Ash leaving her chair. She’d as soon learn that Ash never went on a first date without packing a three-inch screwdriver, just in case.

Leaving her chair wouldn’t be happening soon, either. The paper wasn’t just to make the office look like a medieval crime scene, it was research material, the top half inch being a list of night schools, a phrase used here in its loosest possible sense. From colleges of further education through private tutorial services to voluntarily-run classes in rooms over garages, what these places had in common was that all offered courses—some leading to certificates recognised by national education bodies; others just providing a grounding in practical knowledge—in basic electronics, or chemistry, or—and here we were back in Slough House, and one of those team meetings in which Jackson Lamb dispensed his earthly wisdom—“your general basic lesson in how to build a bomb.”

“Seriously?”

“What, you think people make bombs without learning how first? Like it’s bungee jumping, or writing a novel?”

She didn’t think that. She just didn’t suppose bomb-making was a night-school course.

After the half inch of alternative educational outlets came seven and a half further inches: more lists, often incomplete, of pupils attending these courses, along with basic identifiers—addresses, NI numbers; where pertinent, criminal records.

“And I’m supposed to what, find you some trainee terrorists?”

“Best-case scenario, yeah. But worst case, you’ll bore your tits off and go find some other line of work. So that’s a win-win.”

She had looked around. Louisa was nearest. “Did he just objectify me?”

“Wasn’t listening. But probably, yeah.”

The pile of paper had grown no thinner since that conversation. Ash still wasn’t sure how many names it contained, but had a shrewd idea of how long it would take to verify the intentions of all concerned. A nillion years, this being her childhood quantification of, basically, eternity.

Meanwhile, her mother was reaching her showstopper—the part where she told Ash she didn’t want to interfere—and Ash responded, as she mostly did, by refraining from asking her, if she ever did want to interfere, to make sure she let Ash know in advance, because short of her turning up in a tank it was unlikely Ash would notice a difference.

“I only hope this has been of some use to you, Ashley.”

“So do I, Mum.”

“You’ll thank me one day.”

Roll on, thought Ash.

She put her phone down. The task in front of her hadn’t gone anywhere; the office still smelled beige. Nominally she shared with River Cartwright, but he had yet to return from his long-distance skive, as Shirley put it, so it had been Ash’s alone since her arrival. A small mercy buried within the bigger punishment. But it meant the smell, the damp, the creaking noises in the corners were also hers alone. For a while she sat with her face buried in her hands, her mind playing out various alternative futures. Then she sat up straight, brushed her hair from her eyes, checked her phone, and carried on doing nothing.

Works have recently been completed on Aldersgate Street. The digging up of pavements is done, the re-laying of slabs complete, and if the end result is that the walkways are a little more crooked—a little less safe—this is one more argument for leaving things as they are for fear of making them worse. But while this is a lesson the slow horses might be wise to heed, if they were wise they would not be slow horses, and even those whose windows look down on the recently patched pavements—and who have spent hours moaning about the workers’ noise—now gaze down at the sight of pedestrians tripping on unaligned edges without reaching that conclusion. And this, perhaps, is another lesson: that those very things which ought to be plain and obvious are often among those most difficult to read. But perhaps this depends on the reader.

For now, though, the only reading being done is the slow, excruciatingly dull assessment of columns of figures and lists of names, of spreadsheets teeming with cells and sparklines, of ancient files in prehistoric formats, that previous readers—long since dust themselves—have amended and footnoted with marginal squiggles in ink that time has turned purple. If there are stories here, they’re crying out not to be told; would much rather go the way of lost myths, and be allowed to perish silently on pages that remain uncut. But things leak out regardless. Old legends are exhumed, to test their durability against the modern world. This does not always result in a happy ending.

Endings of any kind, though, remain distant for the moment. Behind their doors, behind their windows, the slow horses plough on with their tasks, and if the world wanders past them regardless, this can be counted as success. For spies, unlike books, can be judged by their covers, and this outward show of ordinary boredom is their saving grace; as long as it is maintained, these grunts of the intelligence service are ignorable and unlikely to come to serious harm. But any attempt to shake off anonymity will leave them at the mercy of those lurking on Spook Street’s borders—its scarecrows and hangmen—its hawks and its hoods—and such mercy is frequently withheld. This has happened before. There are only so many times it can happen again, but this is one of them.

It starts like this.

The sky was as blue as an egg, provided the egg was blue. The fields were as yellow as cars. The escarpment whose exit revealed the county spread out like, like, like—he wanted to say a dartboard—had felt, as he’d driven through it, part of a child’s game; a cavern crafted from cardboard, say, through which a small vehicle could be pushed, and from which its emergence would always be a surprise and a delight.

It would be fair to say that River Cartwright was in an uplit mood.

He was heading to Oxford the same day the Brains Trust was convening there in the safe house, though he couldn’t know that at the time. Of more interest to him was the simple state of being alive, and taking in the associated pleasures. Breathing, for example. Breathing was not something he’d take for granted again, or that was how it felt most mornings, when he woke and found himself doing just that: drawing in air, expelling it, his lungs doing their job unassisted, in a room empty of equipment designed to cope with the possibility that they might not. Waking up next to Sid, too. His new life was full of good things; moments he’d never call miracles, because once you did that you were hostage to a belief system, but still: pretty good. He’d been dead, or next worst thing; had spent nine days in a coma. Sid had also been dead; dead to him, and to everyone else, for longer than seemed feasible—and now they were back, and sharing this new chapter together. It shouldn’t surprise anyone, least of all himself, that he had these passages of joy to contend with. Just so long as he kept them quiet.

Good things weren’t the whole story, of course. There was still the occasional convulsion to deal with, meaning make sure nobody noticed—as far as the world was concerned, he was one hundred per cent fit. “The world” meant Regent’s Park. It was just a matter of time, then, before the powers above—before Doctor Desk, the Park’s chief medical officer—passed him ready for the workplace. Whether anyone was ever really ready for Slough House was one for philosophers rather than medics, but even so, what mattered was his physical condition, and occasional convulsion aside, he was fit, he was ready. The rest was paperwork. And having done all he could to chivvy that along, he was just killing time until the documents were signed and stamped.

Which was why he was in the car this morning: because movement beat staying still; it whisked up time, sent it spinning faster. River was heading to Oxford, to discuss the matter of his grandfather’s library, and the book it had contained which had gone missing before turning out not to exist; a puzzle which would either yield to straightforward explanation or wouldn’t. It didn’t much matter either way. But addressing it would keep him busy, and deposit him that much nearer his own actual life, which this time round he would handle with wisdom and finesse, as befitted someone who’d been given a second chance. Slough House was for keeps: The slow horses had heard that so often they’d been beaten hopeless by the knowledge, and barely questioned it any more. But River knew what he was capable of, and while it was true he’d had troubles with Diana Taverner, she was far too canny an operator to deprive herself of a talented agent out of what, pique? They could have a sit-down, or a stand-up. A face-to-face. However it came about, he’d make it work. The sky was still blue; the fields shading to green. As he drove towards Oxford, still uplit, he might not have a song in his heart but he had a radio that worked, and was playing “Solsbury Hill.” That would do for now.

A low-slung waddling creature in a cherry-coloured waistcoat was leading a middle-aged couple along the Barbican terrace, pausing every few yards to catalogue recent canine activity, but there was no one else in sight. Way overhead, a sliding noise was a window opening, too high to be a worry, but she glanced upwards anyway because this was the world Diana Taverner moved in, requiring alertness to the possibility of someone watching, of records being kept. Never was the only right moment to drop your guard.

The bricks—this was the Barbican; there were bricks everywhere, except where there was concrete or glass—were shining in the noonday sun, and weeds were flowering in crevices, adding yellow and purple notes to faded greys and reds. The sky was largely blue, barring a contrail growing puffier by the moment, like cotton wool dropped in water. The hands on her watch overlapped, precisely. The bulky shape approaching was her appointment. Late.

He was wheezing, and overdressed for the weather; his familiar greasy overcoat flapping around his thighs. Hardly out of character, but still: She found herself arching her eyebrows, shaking her head. “My God, Jackson. Do you never think about losing weight?”

“Yeah, once a week I take an extra-big dump.” He patted his stomach. “Keeps me in trim.”

“It keeps you in heart attack territory.”

“Potato potahto. What do you want?”

“Never been one for small talk, have you?”

“Nice weather, seen the news, up the Arsenal,” said Lamb. “Small talk’s just bullshit leaving the body.”

There was a bench next to one of the concrete flower beds that were there to add insult to injury. Whether by design or good fortune, it sat permanently in shade cast by one or other of the overhead towers, whose continuing existence arguably amounted to a victory for terrorism. When Lamb lowered himself onto one side Diana half expected it to tilt, but hadn’t taken into account that it was bolted to the ground. She sat, placing her tote bag between them, and when she looked up he was holding a lit cigarette, which he hadn’t been a moment ago. Lamb could peel an orange one-handed in his pocket, if doing so would save him having to offer you a segment.

She said, “There’s a rumour those things are bad for you.”

“And there’s statistics prove healthy people die. What’s your point?”

“Forget I spoke.”

“Already done.” He inhaled, exhaled, admired his own prowess, then said, “You look like you found a condom in your cornflakes, Diana. You going to tell me about it or just piss off back to the Park?”

Taverner was a great believer in what mediators call “deep listening,” whereby the person she was talking to, regardless of how violently they disapproved of what she was saying, would shut up and agree with her. Lamb was never likely to fill this role, but here and now—as regrettably so often—there was no one else to unload on. Or at least, no one she’d not have to fire afterwards. “It’s the Park that’s the problem.”

“You’re looking for somewhere new to bunk up, you can share with Ho. Though I warn you, he’s not the most refined of characters.” Lamb shook his head sadly, then farted.

“Finished?”

“Floor’s yours.”

“So I get a call from HR notifying me of a grievance being taken out. This is one of my favourite things, obviously, what with my being not very busy keeping the nation safe from terror attacks and stuff like that.”

“Someone’s made a complaint about you?” Lamb shrugged. “Find out who and either slap them silly or buy them a box of Smarties. You really need me to tell you that?”

“Except the grievance process allows for anonymity, so no one making their whines heard has to worry about getting wedgied in the changing rooms.”

“You’ll have to forgive me,” he said, dropping into his plummiest voice. “Not having attended public school, I’ve no idea how these rituals work.”

“Yes, you were too busy having knife fights, I’m sure. Anyway—anyway. The nub of the matter is, it seems I have caused offence, owing to a, ah, threatening turn of phrase I habitually employ. The poor darling ‘doesn’t feel safe,’ apparently. Is worried I might be planning some kind of genocidal onslaught on the gender-fluid, on account of my tendency to refer to the boys and girls on the hub as precisely that, the boys and girls, instead of adopting some less heteronormative terminology more respectful of the range of sex-based identities that a diverse cohort might be expected to embrace.” She paused for breath. “Or something.”

Lamb said, “Intolerable.”

“Isn’t it?”

“I meant you.”

“Of course you did.” She held a hand out, palm flat, and with a sigh suggesting he’d just been informed of the death of a loved one, Lamb fished a cigarette from somewhere, presented it to her, and lit it. “Boys and girls,” she said. “That’s what they’ve always been called, they have always been called the boys and girls, regardless of their age, their gender identity or their sexual leanings. I don’t care about any of those things, why would I? So long as they do their job, that’s all I ask. Do their job, and not bother me with their millennial whimpering.”

“It’s touching, the bond you share with them,” said Lamb. “I hardly know whether to cry or tug myself off.”

“And the thanks I get, the respect they should be showing, instead of that I’m accused of acting like some . . . heartless bitch.”

“Imagine.” Lamb dropped his smoked-out cigarette, and performed his social duty by grinding it underfoot and leaving it where it lay. “Well, I’m glad you got that off your chest. Anything else bothering you, you can always reach my voicemail, which I make a point of deleting unlistened to.” He stood. “Saves us both time.”

“Sit down and shut up. I’m not finished.”

He sat. “Are you really coming to me for advice on this, Diana? Because joking aside, your next move’s obvious. Admit nothing, deny everything, and make counter-accusations. Sound familiar? It’s the Number Ten playbook.”

“It’s the schoolyard playbook, to be fair. And while I appreciate the input, no, I don’t need your advice. I’m not dumb enough to think you give a flying dog-dump about grievance procedures, but there’s an important difference between us, which is that I’m not you. But the way things have been lately I’m under siege, which means any threat to my position, no matter how trivial, might have consequences. And while I’m famously tolerant of all manner of outrageous impositions, if there’s one thing I will not do, it’s suffer fucking consequences.”

“You want this whiner found.”

“Your boy Ho should be able to do it in his sleep.”

“Might interfere with his sex life. Which also only happens in his—”

“You’ll do this for me?”

“Provided it doesn’t inconvenience me in the slightest, sure. What are friends for?”

“Thank you.”

“Oh, please, you’ll set me off again. Can I go now?”

“There’s something else. You’re not going to like it.”

“That’s a broad spectrum.”

“Cartwright won’t be coming back.”

Lamb didn’t so much as twitch. “And this upsets me how?”

“Because much as you like to pretend otherwise, you enjoy having him around.”

“Well, I’m not saying he won’t leave a gap. He goes, I might have to hire a living statue, or an influencer. You know, someone with no discernible talent beyond a misplaced sense of importance.” He was holding another cigarette now, and put it in his mouth unlit. “But it’s hardly a surprise. The way I remember it, the whole point of Slough House was to get the idiots off the books.”

“And the way it turned out, we despatch them to you and they take root.”

“I can think of a few got weeded out.”

“Yes, your mortality rate’s distressing, given your remit’s paperwork based. Most offices in the country, you could expect raised eyebrows about that. You’re lucky we’re still a secret service. If this was public domain, you’d be a laughing stock.”

“Easy for you to say. But comedy’s harder than it looks,” said Lamb. “So what’s Cartwright’s problem, anyway? Apart from being Cartwright, I mean.”

“He won’t pass the medical.”

“They’ve introduced an IQ test?”

“He suffered a toxic shock, Jackson. From a nerve agent whose long-term effects remain unknown. We keep him in employment, we could be looking at God-knows-what liability in the future, so the sensible route is to get shot of him now. With all due sensitivity, obviously.”

“Well, yeah. Kid fucking gloves.”

“But he might need reminding that when he found himself rattling death’s doorknob, he was on what the lawyers call a frolic of his own. So if he’s expecting a disability pay-off, he’s in for a disappointment.”

“He’s a slow horse. Disappointment’s his factory setting.”

“You’re taking this suspiciously well.”

“Cartwright’s just part of the furniture,” said Lamb. “And I hate furniture. Losing him won’t keep me up at night.”

“Does anything?”

“Viagra.”

“Sorry I asked.” She stood. “Well. Back to civilisation.”

“Just so I’ve got this straight,” said Lamb. “You want my boy Ho to work out who made this complaint against you so you can piss on their chips while saving your career. And at the same time you’re crapping on one of my crew just to save the Park some workman’s comp down the line. Pardon me if I’m being obtuse, but what’s in it for me?”

She reached into her tote bag and pulled out a bottle wrapped in green tissue paper.

“Deal.”

“Something else you should know,” she said.

“For fuck’s sake, what is this, Columbo? What now?”

“An enquiry came into my office. About another one of yours.”

“Let me guess. Standish has been swiped on Tinder, and someone’s checking her sex tree.” Lamb made a vague hand gesture, as if offering Taverner the keys to his kingdom. “Just hand over the employee list for the 1990s, that should cover it.”

“Not Standish. Louisa.”

“Guy? I imagine she’s been through Tinder twice by now. Surprised she has time to show up in the office, to be honest.”

“Well, that might not be on the cards much longer either. She’s being headhunted.”

“Really?” Lamb looked doubtful. “If someone’s collecting heads, I’d have thought Dander’s was a better bet. Make a good bowling ball.”

“Maybe you could add that to her employee profile. That aside, remember Devon Welles? He was Flyte’s second.”

Emma Flyte: former head Dog. Resting now in peace.

“I remember someone called Dorset. Or was it Rutland?”

“That’s him. He’s in the private sector now, doing very happily for himself. And recruiting former comrades, it would seem.”

“Fairly indiscriminately, too.”

“Harsh. I’ve often thought she’s the best of your lot.”

“It’s comparative, isn’t it? Like, you’re the best First Desk since Charles Partner. And he was working for the fucking Russians.”

“I nearly had her brought back last year.”

“To the Park?”

“It felt like she’d done her time.”

“No one ever goes back to the Park.”

“I know. Imagine how much it would have pissed the rest of your crew off.”

“You do realise, if I tell her that now, it’ll fuck with her head.”

“Of course.”

“All this and Talisker too,” said Lamb. “Must be my birthday.”

And he shambled off in the opposite direction to that from which he’d arrived, which might have been spook instinct kicking in—the one that tells you never to take the same route twice—or might have been because this was the Barbican, and remembering how you got anywhere was an upstairs struggle at the best of times.

Diana, meanwhile, headed for street level and the nearest cab, replaying the encounter as she did so. Lamb distrusted most stratagems: Throw him a bone, he’d have been asking where it came from before it hit the ground. Throw three bones, though, and even he might just accept you’d been to the butcher’s and leave it at that. No guarantees, but you did what you could. Having done that much, she headed back to the Park.

The college was on the Woodstock Road, one of the two main thoroughfares leading northwards out of the city. Finding it was simple, thanks to Google Maps—which gave River pause; a spooks’ nursery should surely be, what, cloaked?—but parking was a challenge. Welcome to Oxford. After circling his target a while, he wound up on a side street five minutes’ walk away, then, as long as he had the app open, he checked on Slough House, and Jesus: That was there too! He looked forward to mentioning this to Lamb. He’d have to explain what Google Maps was, and possibly also the existence of social media, but some punchlines take longer to drop than others. He was whistling as he headed for the college, crossed the main road and called at the porters’ lodge. There, waiting for Erin Grey to be summoned, he gazed at buildings old and new, and reflected that this route he’d never taken had its charms, even if those who emerged at the other end frequently lacked them. Or maybe he was exaggerating. Sid, after all, was an Oxford graduate, and look at her. Not that she’d attended the Spooks’ College.

“Mr. Cartwright.”

Erin Grey had arrived while he’d been gathering wool.

Until now, their conversations had taken place on the phone, and this was his first chance to see what she looked like, or would have been, if Sid hadn’t cyberstalked her. “I’m not sending you on a blind date without knowing what the enemy looks like,” she’d said.

“This is not a blind date. And not with an enemy.”

“I’ll be the judge of that.”

To be fair, she had a point.

Grey was a redhead, somewhere around thirty, somewhere around five eight, and there were doubtless other numbers he could have called upon had he been inclined. The hair, evidently abundant when unleashed, was held in check by a cream-coloured Tilley hat, a brand River’s grandmother, Rose, had favoured for protection from the sun. Erin also had pale blue eyes and wore jeans and a white blouse, which as far as it went was pretty much a match for what he was wearing himself. In other circumstances this might have been a starting pistol for entry-level flirtation, but River still had that conversation with Sid replaying in his mind.

“Not my type,” he’d said, carefully not looking at the picture she’d unearthed. Did you “unearth” things online? Probably not the moment to set that hare running.

“You don’t have a type,” she told him. “Up till now, you’ve barely had a look-in.”

“Well, all I’m going to look at in Oxford is the old man’s book collection. And find out about this non-existent volume Ms. Grey has identified.”

“Ms. Grey!” This delighted Sid, for some reason.

It could still be, after all these months, utterly discombobulating how quickly a conversation could metastasize. It was like trying to catch soap in a jacuzzi while drunk, and also maybe handcuffed to something.

“Sid? I don’t care what she looks like, which incidentally isn’t as hot as you seem to think. I have no interest in her other than as the, what, the curator of Grandad’s library. Okay?”

“Said the spy.”

“Well what’s that got to do with—?”

“Spies lie. They betray. It’s what they do.”

He knew that. He just wouldn’t have set it out quite so uncompromisingly, in this particular context.

Meanwhile, Erin was waiting for him to respond, so he said, “River, please.”

They shook hands and she spoke some more, introductory stuff about the college, and had he been here before, and the library was this way. He had already told her this would be his first visit, but sometimes you had to say things twice—it was normal human interaction. They walked round a corner into a small courtyard, if that wasn’t too grand a word, bustling with summer foliage.

“We’re a centre for Russian studies,” she was saying. “A lot of analysts, a lot of historians, a lot of experts. And yes, before you ask, that includes Moscow watchers.” The phrase they used at the Park, back in the O.B.’s day. “But if you were expecting a basement where they test exploding sandwiches and invisible cars, you’re in for a disappointment.”

“Shame. I’ve often wondered what an exploding sandwich tastes like.”

“It’s the last thing I’d eat.” She delivered this so deadpan, he wasn’t sure a joke was intended.

She led him into a vestibule equipped with coat hooks and notice boards and a set of pigeonholes. A poster for an evening of Ukrainian folk music, and another for a lecture series, also on a Ukrainian theme. A corridor stretched ahead; the floor tiled in a soft brown colour, the various doors on either side new looking. It was cool, bordering on chill, and there was no obvious noise until he moved, to discover his shoes percussive on the tiles.

“You’re not the actual librarian, are you?” he asked.

“God, no. I’m doing a master’s, but I was roped in to help with your grandfather’s collection. Maybe because I was at the Park not long ago.”

“Yeah, you said. I remember. Sorry.”

“No, I’ve enjoyed it. It felt like a huge jigsaw puzzle. Also, there are free meals involved.”

He’d been apologising for forgetting her backstory, but it didn’t seem worth picking up on. Too often, lately, he’d found himself on the wrong side of a social miscue. Hard to tell if this was a symptom of his brush with a destabilising nerve agent or just who he was, his occasional gaucherie writ larger post-pandemic, in common with most everyone else.

“We’re in here.”

They’d come to the end of the corridor, having passed a set of doors into what looked like the main library: a tall room, book lined, with carrels round the edge, though none of this as leather-bound or oak-lined as his imagination had expected. Instead, it was all glass and blond wood, with high windows through which the upper limbs of trees could be seen, lazily weaving patterns out of sunshine. He hadn’t noticed any readers, though it had been a quick glance. Calm, though. Peaceful. That behind him, he was shown through another door into a room that was smaller but nevertheless punched him when he entered. He had to hide an intake of breath and hope Erin hadn’t noticed.

It wasn’t the O.B.’s study—no Night Watch, no armchairs, no fireplace—but the books on the shelves, arranged as he’d always known them, triggered something he hadn’t realised was there. Like entering a strange room to find the view from his childhood window. It wasn’t as if he’d memorised the shelves’ contents, more that they’d imprinted themselves; it was the wallpaper he’d grown up with, and long stopped noticing. Now, something between grief and undirected longing welled inside him. Here were the shelves no one was allowed to dust. Here were the patterns that had always been there. The feeling crawled up his spine, not for the first time, that there was a cipher lurking beneath the surface of these texts, its meaning all but ready to surrender, if you held the key.

He pulled himself back. “Blimey . . . I mean, I knew what you’d done. I just hadn’t thought it’d be so . . .”

He hadn’t thought it would be so like time travel.

The room, yes, was smaller than the O.B.’s study, the rows of shelves packed more closely together. Not the exact configuration, then, but unnervingly similar, and as he stepped towards the books, he found himself remembering their titles, or at least, finding the touchstones when he looked for them—there was Churchill, there was Beevor; there, among newer volumes, were Macintyre, Andrew and Aldrich. Biographies and histories and analytical studies, with the occasional frivolity thrown in, in the shape of a smattering of paperbacks kept low down, where the casual gaze wouldn’t encounter them—not an embarrassment, but a private pleasure: Deighton, Ambler, Price, Littell. The le Carrés in hardback on a shelf above, next to Dickens.

That was it for fiction, though. More prominent was the shelf of almost spineless pamphlets; samizdat material, and fugitive releases from the presses of long-defunct academic institutes, or roneo’d in garages by bearded dissidents—impossible to escape that detail: They all had beards, in River’s experience. He couldn’t swear to this particular rag-tag, dog-eared collection being in the identical order it had been back home, but he couldn’t discern a difference. Perhaps they’d been jammed together so long they’d moulded into place, each pamphlet squeezed against the next so snugly it was all but glued there, the whole shelf-load demanding to be viewed always in the same order, one way and one way only.

She said, “We made good use of your film, as you can see.”

His film, the six-second video he’d shot the night his hand had touched that nearly fatal doorknob. This had been a punctuation mark on a dreamlike passage of time, during which he’d discovered that Sid had come back from the dead—the memory of a bullet still embedded in her brain—and holed up in the O.B.’s house, which had been emptied of belongings, except for his study. She’d made herself a nest, hiding from a homicidal pair of Moscow-centred thugs who planned to kill her a second time, and had been curled up asleep there when River scanned the room with his phone: the O.B.’s shelves, his books and mementoes, the print of The Night Watch above the fire, Sid herself. He’d hacked the last second off the copy he’d sent Erin.

“It’s just a pity the room isn’t more of a match for your grandfather’s.”

“No. No, it looks great. You’ve gone . . . above and beyond.”

Erin looked pleased. She was, he guessed, someone for whom a task wasn’t worth doing if it wasn’t done in such a way that casual bystanders were impressed. She said, “It’s a shame we don’t have any of your grandfather’s objets. They’d have added a touch of authenticity.”

It had been an odd collection of trophies to be sure: a glass globe, a hunk of concrete from the Berlin Wall, a twisted lump of metal that had once been a Luger, and a letter opener which in a previous life had been a stiletto belonging to Beria, and in a more recent one had been used by Sid to terminate one of those thugs she’d been hiding from. Unlike Erin, he was more relieved than otherwise that these items remained out of the picture. Books could form a personal collection, but were not, in themselves, personal. Books belonged to everyone. Blood-stressed knives and furnace-blasted handguns, though, spoke of a more intimate history, and River couldn’t imagine his grandfather being happy about their being placed on show. Or Sid, for that matter.

Anyway, that was moot. In his medically unavoidable absence, his mother had wrested control of the house and what remained of its contents, and allowed her lack of sentimentality about her father to take the reins. It was a wonder she’d deigned to preserve the books, though this might have had to do with her fear of being thought a philistine. Her late-onset respectability came with some advantages.

Because Erin seemed to be awaiting a response, he said, “They mostly wound up in a skip.”

“Oh. Shame.”

That was after the house’s façade had been stripped away, along with every last trace of poison, or so everyone hoped. You couldn’t help but wonder, though. It wasn’t like the nerve agent in question was a known quantity. Its very name meant “the new guy,” making it sound like a stranger in a Western: riding into town, looking for trouble. Hard to deny it had found it.

And River was now dragging his sorry arse from the saloon and getting back on his horse.

“Tell me about this missing book,” he said.

If you were designing a set for a small theatre group—something you could throw in the back of a van, then build in a village hall—you’d arrive at something like this: walls close enough together that two people holding hands could span the room’s width; a window with lace curtains nicotined with age; a two-seater sofa with floral design; and something that might be a drinks cabinet, from the days before anyone noticed that drinks taste better from a fridge. On those too-close walls, actual wallpaper, one strip peeling upwards where it met the skirting board; hanging from the ceiling, a paper globe of a lampshade, its underwire poking through the ruffled surface. And pervading it all, the way a bad smell might, the sense that what you saw was all you’d get; that beyond the room’s only door would lie a cramped hallway, off which lay a mean kitchen; that overhead would be two bedrooms, one small, one tiny, and a bathroom barely big enough to drown a dog, with a shower curtain decorated with Disney characters wielding umbrellas. Sometimes the unseen is contained by the seen; one small corner offering up the whole. But that’s a desirable characteristic in a safe house, its easily assimilated limits part of the security it offers.

Al Hawke, who had already toured the house—big verb, small effort—assumed that the couple he was opening the door to would gauge its dimensions with a single glance. “I know what you’re thinking,” he said. “But we’ve stayed in worse.”

But Avril just said, “Al.”

“Avril. Daisy.”

They hugged, all three, once the door was closed and the occupants of passing traffic couldn’t bear witness. Then they trooped into the sitting room, where Daisy sat on the sofa and Avril stationed herself by the window, which was barred. Al was left hovering by the door, his status as first arrival elevating him to the role of host. CC had texted him the code for deactivating the alarm. “There’s coffee. But no milk.”

“CC has always been better about remembering his own needs than others’.”

“Not entirely fair.”

“I’m not saying he’s mean, just . . . unimaginative. Have you seen him?”

Al shook his head.

“Since when?”

“Last year. October, I think. How about you?”

“About the same.”

Daisy, from the sofa, said, “He calls.”

Al, who had once been in CC’s company when he made such a call, could guess how that would have gone. A lot of talking on CC’s side—mostly gentle descriptions of what he’d been up to, places he’d been—and a lot of silence on Daisy’s. Al thought those phone calls were like playing the radio for a cat: They calmed her, but the flow of information went one way.

Like a cat, too, Daisy had taken to the sofa partly for the comfort it offered, partly as a defendable redoubt. Not that she had anything to worry about in present company, but habit digs deep roots.

Avril Potts said, “Is this the best the Park runs to these days? Or is the décor born of nostalgia?” She pursed her lips, as if in genuine thought. “I mean, short of a few secret policemen, we could be in the GDR.”

But she said it in a way that sounded like she was okay with it. Anyway, they’d not be here long.

Still, he had to ask. “When were you in the GDR?”

“Don’t get literal with me, Hawke. I’ve toasted bigger pedants for breakfast.”

“Fair enough.” He winked at Daisy, who was watching them as if they were engaged in a tennis rally. “You can take your pick of the bedrooms. Back one’s smaller, but there’s less noise and you won’t get the streetlights.”

“The back one,” said Avril, “will be barely big enough to contain the bed. And there’ll be less traffic at night, so that’s not an issue.” Al held up his hands in surrender, but she was already continuing: “But you need more space. Daisy and I will manage, I’m sure.”

Meaning, he guessed, that the more contained Daisy was, the safer she’d feel, and that Avril would gladly offer up her own comfort for that result.

Traffic might not be an issue later, but there was no shortage of it now. A main road wasn’t the obvious location for a safe house, but if obviousness was the criterion, the houses would be less secure. Besides, along this particular stretch there was little other residential property; on this side, a row of strangely out of place cottages, of which the farthest left adjoined an empty space that had once been a car park attached to what had once been a pub. A little beyond that, before the road curved, a lane led to public tennis courts. Opposite, behind a fence, lay school playing fields, where the sons and daughters of the obscenely rich, the frighteningly wealthy and the merely well-to-do could begin to absorb the lessons their lives would hold, chief among these being that money helped. The school itself was along the road to the right, its stout frontage dominating a hundred yards or so of pavement. Obviously most pupil drop-offs and pick-ups involved SUVs, so there was little pedestrian hustle. No, Al concluded; the site had been well chosen. This was a stretch of road on which nobody lingered.

As for why CC had summoned them, they’d have to wait to find out.

To Avril, he said, “Well, up to you. If you change your mind.”

“It’s not a mini-break, Al. We can cope with a little discomfort.”

Daisy herself either agreed with all of this, or didn’t disagree strongly enough to voice her opinion. She was gazing through the window’s yellowed lace. From outside, she would be a vague shadow. There were times when she was much the same if you were in the room with her.

And whose fault was that?

The women had been carrying one small holdall between them. Al knew better than to offer to carry it upstairs.

“About that coffee,” he said.

“Let me,” said Avril. “I remember your coffee only too well.”

She found the kitchen. Sounds of tap turning and kettle filling followed, while Al watched Daisy. Watching Daisy in the past had sometimes been a duty, sometimes a joy, but had never been undertaken without a rearrangement occurring in his heart. This time round, it was the increasingly familiar sensation of recognising time’s footwork, the marks it leaves as it stamps all over you. She was a little more worn, a little more lined, and while carrying nothing like the damage his own battered frame had weathered, was through her middle years now, everything speeding up. Which did not alter the fundamental truth of her: She was, always would be, beautiful. He, meanwhile, would always be a bruiser. It took all sorts.

He said, “How’ve you been?”

She took her time replying, and could only manage, “Same old.”

“CC drop any hints what this is about?”

Daisy shook her head as Avril came back in. “I swear, sometimes I’d swap a safe house for a convenient one. There’s no plunger for the cafetière.”

Al laughed, and even Daisy smiled.

Outside, traffic rumbled as the afternoon got into gear.

“Tell me about this missing book,” River said.

“Yeah, no, better than that. I’ll show you.” Her laptop was on a table in the corner, and he hovered while she called up the footage.

When they’d first spoken, some weeks previously, she’d asked for his memories of the room; whether he had clues to offer about the books’ arrangement. “You don’t have a photograph, by any chance?”

“I might. I’d need to poke around in my phone. Or, tell you what, we could hire a hypnotist? See if he could prod me into recalling what went where?”

“Maybe as a last resort,” she’d said, her tone suggesting she was used to humouring oddballs. Well, an Oxford college.

“Or I could send you this short video which pans the whole room, bookshelves included.”

“. . . Yeah, that might work.”

He had rewatched the clip several times since. The shelves were captured, but the books remained largely anonymous: so fleetingly observed, you’d need to be a speed reader to catch a title. His grandfather, he’d sometimes thought, had absorbed printed material; cloistered in his study, he’d been party to their dialogue. All those words, dancing in the air. With a little effort he could see the O.B. before dementia carried him off; leaning back, eyes closed, glasses on a chain. His hands conducting the melodies the books were making; his mind translating it into information. But it was too easy for the image to corrupt. Stare for long and you’d see David Cartwright alone and frightened in his ruined memory palace, its beams and rafters collapsing around him. River shook his head. Let the old man be.

Erin had the clip running on her laptop. He leaned forward, suddenly conscious of the soap she used. The shot panned as he remembered, ending just short of the sleeping Sid.

“The book’s on the bottom shelf of the second stack. A white spine with red lettering. Block caps. Let’s get a little more focus and a little less speed.” She magnified the screen so only the bottom shelves showed and ran the clip again in slo-mo, making River dizzy. When she hit the space bar the scene froze, and the writing on the spines—already enlarged beyond decipherability—became a ghostly buzz, as if the lettering had suffered an electric shock. What had been blurred furry letters were now ornate but inscrutable patterns; the claw prints of wading birds awaiting the tide’s erasure.

“I’m not sure I can read that,” River admitted. Not sure: He was damn sure. All he could make out was a calligraphic soup. He knew this was writing, but he’d have been hard-pressed to determine which alphabet.

“No, we had to run it through a motion-capture program to read the titles. But you just need to see it’s there.”

“It’s there.”

“And trust me, it says The Secret Voices: A Hidden History of Deep Cover Lives. By M. H. Leggaty.”

“Okay.”

“And there’s no record that a book with that title exists. And the author’s untraceable.”

“So you said on the phone. And the book’s now missing.”

“If it was included in the boxes that arrived, it’s disappeared since. It’s the only book I can identify onscreen which isn’t here.”

River looked again at the frozen image on her laptop. It had been there when he shot the video; was part of his grandfather’s library, so he must have seen it countless times. But he couldn’t pretend that, even in its vague and fuzzy form, it was ringing any bell.

He said, “I don’t remember it. I mean, obviously, yes, it’s there. But the title means nothing to me.”

“He never mentioned it?”

River gestured around the room. “He had a few books. As you’ve discovered.”

“But this one wasn’t real. So maybe it weighed on his mind more than others.”

A nerve was pulsing in his neck and he pressed a palm to it. Then took a step back so Erin wouldn’t notice. She might think he was hiding something: guilty knowledge? All he wanted was to keep presenting as healthy and untroubled. Any physical tremors, spasms, uncontrollable shakes or shivers? he’d been asked at his last check-up. No. None. But a nerve was pulsing in his neck.

He said, “A fake book. You’re thinking it was a box.”

“One he made himself, it would seem.”

“Or borrowed from stores.”

“Which would make it antique. The Park stopped making cute little hidey-places about the time they gave up equipping agents with jetpacks.”

“And it doesn’t read like an antique title.”

“My thoughts too. No, this wasn’t a work souvenir. I think Cartwright—I mean, your grandfather—I think he was using it. And now it’s gone.”

“Along with whatever was inside.”

Erin pushed her chair back and stood. “Yes.” She’d removed her hat and her hair was making a statement of sorts, possibly a declaration of independence. “Which is why I thought you ought to know about it.”

“Thanks. Have you told the Park?”

“I used to work for First Desk, did you know that?”

“For Taverner?”

“Well, it was hardly going to be Ingrid Tearney, was it? How old do you think I am?”

River wasn’t going anywhere near that. “And was it a joyous experience?”

“I’m guessing you don’t really need to be told. But no, I’ve said nothing to the Park. On account of having had enough to do with them to see me through the rest of my life.”

“Okay. Well, thanks for putting me in the picture.” He realised this sounded ungracious, but it was said now. Words were slippery beasts. “I suppose we’d better think about how and when the book might have gone astray.” Even to his own ears, he sounded like a third-rate Sherlock. “Or who might have—”

“Way ahead of you,” said Erin.

“You have a suspect.”

“Well, I know it wasn’t me. So that only leaves one candidate,” she said.

Like a blue tit tapping on a milk bottle top, some things only have to happen once, somewhere, before they’re happening everywhere, all the time. In Slough House, this morning’s milk bottle was Roddy Ho, unless he was the tit—either way, it was in his office that the slow horses congregated, eager to investigate a rumour that had circulated with the usual speed of rumours in offices: No one knew how it started, but everyone was in sudden possession of the same facts.

“Roddy, hi!” said Ash.

“Roddy, ha!” said Shirley.

“Roddy, hey!” said Louisa.

“Roddy,” said Lech. “Huh.”

Roddy did something that switched all his monitors to screensaver mode. “What do you want?”

“We can’t go on together,” said Shirley, “with suspicious minds.”

“Yeah, lighten up,” said Louisa. “We just want to know about your wound.”

“My money’s on some kind of street hassle,” said Lech. “You know, like you were facing down a horde of angry squaddies.”

It was true that this was the kind of action Roddy was likely to find himself elbows-deep in come a Friday night, but that was due to his movie choices.

“Either that,” Lech continued, “or a Girl Guide gave you a dead leg.”

“To match your head,” said Shirley.

Ash had wandered to the window and leant against the wall, arms folded. “But I reckon you’ve got yourself some body art. That’s what I reckon.”

So she’d been giving him some thought. Figured. As a reward, Roddy gave her a look he’d been practising lately, involving one half-closed eye and a slight curl of the lip. Half amused approval, half invitation, basically.

“You about to throw up? Because I am not watching that.”

“Is she right?” said Shirley. “You’ve had a tat done?”

“Joined the brotherhood,” Roddy admitted.

“You’re in a boy band now?” Louisa asked.

“The brotherhood of . . . wrestlers.” Which is what his ink slinger had called Roddy, meaning he was like The Rock or someone. “You wouldn’t understand.”

“So what is it?” Ash said. “My guess is a motorbike in flames.”

“Or a unicorn jumping over a rainbow.”

“Or some kind of heraldic thing,” said Lech. “Like a dickhead, rampant.”

“It’s none of those,” said Roddy.

“Let’s see it,” Shirley demanded.

“It’s not ready yet.”

“What, the transfer’s still wet?”

“It’s not a transfer.”

“I think it probably is,” said Lech. “On account of tattoos hurt. And you’ve got the pain threshold of a marshmallow.”

“Yeah, well, you’ve got the pain threshold of . . . two marshmallows.”

“Come on, Rodster,” said Louisa. “No point going under the gun if you’re not gunna show it off.”

“‘The gun’?” said Lech.

“What they call the tattoo machine,” she explained. “The way they call crybabies ‘wrestlers.’ Because of all the wriggling.”

Ash said, “There’s a thought. We could just wrestle him to the ground and strip his bandage off.”

“It would take all three of you,” Roddy said.

“It would seriously not,” said Shirley.

“I’m supposed to keep it covered another twenty-four hours.”

“But we can’t wait that long,” explained Ash.

“Clinching argument,” said Lech. “Shirley, do the honours?”

Roddy sighed, and held up a palm. It had been bound to come to this—there was always speculation about the RodBod behind his back. Murmurs about his six-pack, mutterings about his butt. Just this morning, entering Costa, he’d heard his usual barista whisper “massive cock” to her colleague. He rolled his sleeve up and peeled the bandage away carefully, not because he was worried about it hurting, but because he didn’t want anything to smudge.

Everyone went quiet.

“What are we looking at?” asked Louisa at last.

“It’s a hummingbird,” said Roddy. “Duh.”

“Yeah, that’s never a hummingbird,” said Lech. “Maybe a platypus?”

“Or a sheep,” said Shirley. “Is it a sheep?”

“Do sheep have five legs?” Ash asked.

“That’s not a leg.”

“. . . Ew!”

“It’s a dung beetle, I think,” said Louisa. “An upside-down dung beetle.”

Shirley tilted her head. “Actually, yeah, a beetle. But why dung specifically?”

“Because it’s shit.”

“It’s a hummingbird,” Roddy repeated, arranging his bandage back into place. “Philadelphians.”

There was a moment’s baffled silence. Then Louisa said, “Philistines!” and Shirley high-fived her.

“This tattoo artist,” asked Lech. “How much did you pay him for making your arm look like a duck crapped on it?”

“And where’d he learn his trade, prison?”

“Everyone having fun?”

And this was Catherine, who was standing in the doorway regarding the pack of them like a secondary school teacher who’d just tracked down vapers.

“Because as I’m sure you’re aware, there’s nothing he likes more than you enjoying yourselves.”

“I thought he was out,” Lech said.

“And that makes you feel safe? That’s nice. Monthly reports up to date? He wants to see them this morning.”

“Even though he never reads them,” said Louisa.

“Yes, well, the perks of leadership.”

“Yeah, right,” said Shirley. “The . . . schmerks of schmeadership, more like.”

“Needs work,” said Lech.

“And you need plastic surgery. But you don’t hear me going on about it.”

“Upstairs in ten minutes,” Catherine warned, leaving them to it. She had work to do, there was always work to do, even if it consisted of the pointless rearrangement of unnecessary information. Lamb insisted on seeing paperwork, because if he ignored everything she gave him onscreen she wouldn’t know about it, whereas when she found a meticulously formatted report she’d printed out at 4:45 tipped into his bin at 4:50, he was clearly making a point. As he no doubt was now, in a different way, by turning up early: When she walked into his office, intending to empty the inevitable ashtrays—an umbrella term which covered anything with an interior space—he was already in occupation, slouching in his chair like a sleeping bag someone had stuffed with potatoes. There’d not been a squeak while he’d climbed the stairs, not even from the back door, which screamed like a startled goose most days.

Hiding her surprise, she asked, “How did the meeting with Taverner go?”

“She implied I look fat,” said Lamb. “This caused me to feel unsafe.”

“I’m sure you’ll get over it. Anything else of importance?”

“Nah, not really.” He put a cigarette in his mouth, but didn’t light it. For Lamb, this was on a par with giving up. “Just chucking her weight around. There are days when I wonder if they shouldn’t bring witch trials back.” He rolled pious eyes heavenwards. “But of course, you’re not allowed to say that any more.”

“Political correctness gone mad,” Catherine agreed. “What’s this morning’s meeting in aid of?”

“Just general morale boosting.”

Oh God. She headed back to her own office and collected printouts—progress reports on the various projects Lamb had instigated—and returned to his room with them.

“More recycling?” he said. He was holding a disposable plastic lighter now, as if fighting a rearguard action against her eco-activism, but hadn’t yet put it to use. “What’s the matter?”

“What makes you think anything’s the matter?”

“I can read you like a . . .”

“Book?”

“Newspaper. They get thrown away afterwards.”

“Silly me. Nothing’s the matter. Barring the usual, that is.”

“Ah,” he said wisely. “You’d be referring to what I’m supposed to call my ‘team.’ The silly custards.”

“Coming from you, that’s suspiciously benign.”

“Well, ‘bastunts’ doesn’t really work. And here they come.”

They trooped in, Lech leading the way, then Shirley, Roddy, Ash. Louisa hung back on the landing, muttering into her phone. Lamb raised an eyebrow, but all avoided his gaze, preferring to concentrate on the surroundings—the corkboard with its display of tattered clippings; the dismal picture of some dismal bridge some dismal where; the desk lamp teetering on a calcified pile of telephone directories, a concept which Ashley, for one, had difficulty getting her head round; the blinds pulled over the skylight, muting the daylight to a drab shroud. Stuffing her phone into her pocket, Louisa attempted to enter the room without being noticed. She did not succeed.

“I’m sure that must have been a nuisance call, from someone who just wouldn’t let you go,” Lamb said. “Because otherwise, you’d have been deliberately wasting your colleagues’ time. And that would be really fucking rude.”

And you hate fucking rudeness, she silently offered. “Sorry, yes,” she lied. “Cold caller.”

“You know how I get rid of them?” Lamb said.

“Pretty sure we don’t want to,” said Lech.

“I pretend to come.”

“Not sure that would work for me,” said Louisa.

“Or me,” said Ash.

“Or me,” said Shirley.

“Or me,” said Roddy. “. . . What?”

“Valuable as this no doubt is,” said Catherine, “perhaps we could skip the preliminaries? I’m sure there are things we could more usefully be doing.”

Shirley snorted; Ash rolled her eyes. Lech said, “Like what, throwing ourselves out of a window?”

Lamb tutted. “Let’s not lose hope. Remember, you’re only ever one spiked drink away from a happy ending.”

“Is there an agenda for this meeting?” Ash asked. “Because I’ve got, like, an office full of boring stuff I could be boring myself to death with.”

“There, see?” Lamb’s beaming face included them all in its benediction. “Our newest recruit, and already she’s as welcome as a banjo on a soundtrack. Now, group huddle. No, not literally, it’s not an excuse for a wank. Let’s just take a moment to be grateful for what we’ve got here.”

The shared incomprehension of everyone else in the room might have powered the whole of Aldersgate Street, had the appropriate technology been available.

“If my years on this planet have taught me anything, it’s that we’re in it together. All for one, one for all. So, a few small things. First, I don’t want anyone hassling Louisa, because she has a big decision to make. She jumps the right way, the rest of you are going to be feeling even more fucking sorry for yourselves than usual, so give her some breathing space. And second, leave Ho alone too. He’s going to be doing an important job for me while the rest of you are busy with the usual crap, because that’s all you’re good for. Everything clear? Grand.” He clapped his hands, then rubbed them together like a vicar. “And they say I don’t know how to inspire the troops. Now, I’ve been told to make sure to use inclusive language when addressing staff. So fuck off, all of you. Not you.”

This meant Ho.

The rest of them fucked off, Ash asking, “We went upstairs for that?”

“Yep. Today’s been a good day,” said Lech. He glanced at Louisa. “Mysterious phone calls, cryptic comments. What’s your big decision about?”

“He’s yanking your chain,” Louisa said, disappearing into her office and kicking the door shut.

“One for all, all for one,” Lech muttered.

“Don’t you start,” Shirley said, and clumped off down the stairs.

First visit or not, River knew an interesting fact about the college, and specifically the centre of Russian studies it housed. This had come, of course, from his grandfather.

“The centre’s first director was the man who recruited Guy Burgess.”

“For which side?” River had asked.

“A good question, but do be careful in whose company you ask it. Skins are still thin in some areas. Burgess and his pals left scars that will never heal.”

Spies lie. They betray. It’s what they do.

Now, to Erin, River said, “So Stan—”

“Stam. With an M.”

“. . . Okay. This Stam, he’s a fellow of the college?”

“Well, he’s a fixture. He has dining rights and uses the library, though whether that’s because he has official status or because the librarian doesn’t want to bar the door to him, I’ve no idea. He’s writing a book I expect. And he was very interested in this project, your grandfather’s library. They worked together, back in the day.”

“So he was in the Service.”

“Yes. That is, he’s never actually come out and said so. They don’t, do they? But he worked with David, he made that clear. Not as a contemporary—I mean, he’s old, but . . .”

But not that old. Fair enough. “Was anyone else helping?”

“If there were, I’d not have been so quick to point the finger. I mean James, the librarian, he has oversight, obviously. But all the work, the organisation, has been left to me, and Stam’s been my only help. Sorting through books, finding the right place on the shelves. Believe it or not, it wasn’t all straightforward.”

“No, I didn’t—”

“There was the crew who delivered the boxes, of course, but they arrived sealed up. And nobody could have known what was in each box. Even if they knew what they were looking for.”

River said, “Yes, but. Presumably they were the same crew who packed the boxes at the other end. It’s possible that the missing book—”

“The Secret Voices.”

“—never got as far as your library in the first place.”

“That would be my preferred outcome,” Erin said.

“Don’t worry. Nobody’s going to be blaming you.”

“You’ve probably forgotten I mentioned this,” she said. “But I used to work at the Park. Trust me, if anything happened, someone’s going to get blamed.”

An interesting thought occurred to River: that the person who had supervised the packing of the books in the first place was his mother. “What kind of name is Stam, anyway?”

“Short for Stamoran. Charles Stamoran. But nobody calls him Charles.”

“I’d better meet him,” he said.

“Which is why we’re heading to the dining hall.”

For lunch, which sounded like a treat—lunch at an Oxford college—but turned out not that different from lunch at a department store. John Lewis, say. A spacious dining area, modern, with long tables and matching chairs. The walls boasted big windows, offering views of the rest of the college: buildings arranged around a small area which, because this was Oxford, was a quadrangle, though anywhere else would be a lawn, some flower beds, a few trees, a litterbin. The buildings weren’t terribly old, but then the college wasn’t one of the ancient institutions; a latecomer, it had the tact not to try too hard, and not to pretend to hallowed customs, or traditions steeped in time. As for the food, you helped yourself from a buffet: lasagna, vegetarian moussaka, baked potatoes, roast meats, salads. Individual trifles in plastic pots. Water, fruit juices, Coke. Then you processed past a till, collecting cutlery from plastic troughs. He offered to pay, but Erin was already proffering a card to the woman totting up their choices. “He’s here,” she said, as she hoisted her tray. “Far end of the room. Sitting by himself.”

“Let’s join him.”

“Do you want me to stay?”

“It’ll look weird if you don’t. But maybe leave before I do?”

He liked her. Because she’d worked at the Park, they shared common ground he’d never find with civilians. Not that he’d be mentioning this to Sid. She led him past tables occupied by serious-looking young folk and towards a window under which a man sat alone, tucking in to the moussaka.

“Stam? Have you met River Cartwright?”

He looked up. “Grandson of?”

“That’s right.”

“A pleasure.”

They shook hands, and Stam invited both to sit, sit.

He was a bullish man. River couldn’t gauge his height while he was seated, but he was still broad-shouldered, still muscular, into his seventies. Bald on top with a white trim of hair around the ears, meeting in a well-tended beard and moustache, and a nose that begged for classical adjectives: Roman, aquiline, something like that. His colour was high, suggesting blood pressure issues. He wore a blue shirt under a light brown corduroy jacket, and spectacles hung on a chain around his neck. As if he were the host, and a duty fell upon him, he began to talk, first asking River if he’d visited the college before, and then embarking on a potted history. River ate his lasagna, not so much absorbing the information as studying the man delivering it, who had worked with his grandfather.

This was a broad church. Cartwright senior had worked in elevated circles but he’d reached low too, claiming the allegiance of joes and handlers alike—of course he had. Holmes had his irregulars; Smiley had his people. Naturally the O.B. had had a crew. Spying is networks; the young River had learned that at his grandfather’s knee. You didn’t run an intelligence service without calling on local talent. Spying is other people. Hell, the clue was in the vocabulary. They called it Spook Street, and a street without inhabitants wasn’t worth the name. Besides, any time you found yourself alone, you’d know you were the one being watched . . . Watching Charles Stamoran, River wondered how close he’d been to the O.B., and whether they’d shared secrets. And whether Stam had stolen some the O.B. had tried to keep.

“Great to see you, Stam, but would you mind excusing me? I’ve emails I need to get round to.”

“Of course. See you later.”

Both men watched Erin leave, neither speaking, both recognising that the conversation had just shifted onto another playing field. River had finished his lunch, or finished eating it, anyway. He was toying with the rest, pushing it around his plate with his fork. Stam was watching him do so. He laid his cutlery down and dabbed his lips with a napkin. “I like to walk a circuit after lunch. Helps with the digestion. Care to join me?”

Couldn’t be better.

They left the dining room, Stam collecting a scarf from a hook by the door and knotting it round his neck. The weather hardly called for it, but River was well short of seventy, so made no comment. Others were leaving the hall at the same time but had places to go, and the quad soon emptied. Stam walked briskly, whether a further aid to digestion or his natural habit wasn’t clear.

“I knew your grandfather,” he said, halfway round their first circuit.

He had one of those I, Claudius voices: not especially loud, but you could make out every syllable. “I know,” River answered.

“In fact, we met once. I doubt you’ll remember.”

“Really?”

“You’d have been eight or nine. I was delivering a file to your house. I knocked at the door and you answered. I asked if your grandfather was in, and you said, ‘I don’t know. I’ll have to ask him.’ I found that funny, though I was careful not to let you see.”

“Did he take you into his study?”

“He did. So yes, I saw his books in their, what would you call it, original habitat. Didn’t help when it came to arranging them.” He delivered a sly sideways glance. “Live long enough, and you stop believing in coincidence. Things happen, that’s all. Naturally there are echoes.”

“Grandfather used to say everything happens in one of two kinds of pattern. The kind you see straight away, and the kind you have to work at.”

“Well, that’s how you get a reputation for being wise. By issuing cryptic little jewels like that.” He tugged at his scarf. “That came out wrong. I admired David Cartwright. He was far higher up the tree than I was, but that didn’t matter to me. I was never Desk material.”

“What did you do?” River had never met a spook whose life story he didn’t want to hear, or one who’d been happy to share it, his grandfather being the notable exception to that latter point.

“Field work. Mostly field work.”

Which evidently included delivering files, a task some might have thought entry-level. But there were files and files; there were people you trusted to deliver them, and people you didn’t.

River said, “There’s a book missing.”

“Yes.”

“Erin’s mentioned it?”

“She didn’t need to. And yes, before you ask, it wasn’t actually a book. I know that too.”

“A box of some sort.”

“We used to call them safes.”

River had known that: Of course he had. But the word had got lost, or at any rate, hadn’t sprung to mind when he and Erin had been discussing it. This fazed him: What else had he forgotten lately? Was there a whole page of vocabulary torn from his mind, scattering in his wake? Like the O.B. in his final days; that bright shining intelligence grown rusty, and its owner barely aware of the fact. Except for occasional moments, the memory of which River suppressed; moments in which his grandfather’s eyes had turned black with horror in the knowledge of what was happening to him.

“How did you know?”

“Well.” Stam came to a halt, the better to fix his eyes on River. “I could say it was obvious. That I’ve studied the film you sent us, and it became apparent something was missing. That that was always likely to happen, don’t you think? Items going missing in the . . . kerfuffle of books being transported?”

Kerfuffle was one way of putting it. The façade of the O.B.’s house had been removed, to ensure that any lingering toxicity had been dealt with. This wasn’t a state secret. There’d been a photograph in The Times.

“But this wasn’t a book, it was a safe,” said River. “So what are the chances this particular volume would be the one to vanish?”

“I’m not a statistician. But that would be unlikely.”

“And isn’t what happened.”

“No, of course not. I took it, as you’ve guessed. Erin too, probably.”

“Yes.”

“And you want to know why.”

In fact, the why seemed obvious to River: because it was there. You were unloading a spook’s library, and came across a treasure chest. Why wouldn’t you steal it? But what he said was, “As long as we’re here.”

Stam started walking again. They were on their second circuit, and a light breeze was blowing. It chased sunbeams around, or that was the effect beneath the quad’s largest tree, its branches’ shadows rearranging themselves as they passed. Stam said, “I wish I could tell you the box contained state secrets. We might both feel better about that. Well, you might.”

River felt the ground shift beneath his feet. “What do you mean?” As soon as the words were out of his mouth, he wanted them recalled; wanted nothing more to do with this conversation. He could walk away, unpark his car, perform the morning in reverse. Fold the landscape behind him as he tootled back to London, to Sid, pretending nothing had happened; that the book was a book, that it had turned up again. But it was too late for any of that, even the parts of it that were possible.

“He was a good man, your grandfather, even a great one. He achieved a lot. That the Park is still standing, that we have an intelligence service esteemed the world over—that’s down to him. Don’t forget that.”

“What was in the box?”

“But he was still just a man.”

“What was in the box?”

“The safe,” Stam corrected. And then repeated himself: “Just a man, with a man’s ordinary wants. I found nothing that would make you think better of him, but that doesn’t mean you should think him any the worse.”

He thought: I could hold this old man down on the ground and pound the truth out of him until it bleeds. I need to know everything. I need to know now. But the breeze was still pushing its way round the quad, ruffling the grass and setting leaves to trembling, and the day was just too ordinary—too civilised—to shatter.

Instead, he took refuge in the obvious. “You found pornography,” he said.

“Yes.”

“You found pornography.” It didn’t sound any better, second time round. “Was it illegal?”

“It wasn’t—it wasn’t desperate.”

The very hedging, the prevarication, made it all so much, so much worse.

“River,” said Stam, and his voice was gentle. “I destroyed it. All right? I destroyed what I found, the safe too.”

“Why the safe?” Irrelevance is a shelter; stops you thinking about anything else. “Why not just put it back?”

“I should have done. I’m sorry. You need never have known about any of this. But I wasn’t thinking. I burned what it contained, and I threw the safe, the box, in the fire too. It’s all gone. You don’t ever need to think about it.”

“Easy to say. I mean—”

But he didn’t know what he meant. His grandfather had raised him, he and Rose. When he thought about being an adult, living a proper life, it was David and Rose he was thinking about. That his grandfather had a secret life was a given. That the secrets it held might be so banal: This threatened to unmoor him.

“We all have things we’d like to hide in boxes,” Stam was saying. “That we wouldn’t want exposed. It doesn’t undo all the good in our lives.”

Or augment it, either. The uplit mood he’d been in earlier, the tunes waiting to be whistled, were all gone. They walked another circuit in silence, Stam evidently knowing he’d said enough, that River didn’t want to hear words of comfort. All spies’ lives end in failure: That was something else the O.B. had once said. And this was what failure looked like; the last of your secrets taken out of their box and exposed to the daylight. And what shabby, paltry things they were after all.

In the safe house, the trio were playing cards.

. . . There should be rain lashing windows, power cuts and candles; a bottle of vodka and a hunk of bread. Instead they were drinking tea, sharing a plate of special biscuits from a deli three minutes’ walk away, and—so far successfully—making a collective effort not to use the words Do you remember? But remembering, anyway, the days of cold passes and brush-bys, of synchronised watches and dead-letter drops—methods already antiquated when the three of them were operational, but in joe country you clung to the old ways, because the new ways gave themselves away: a phone you weren’t supposed to have, a bugging device that might as well have been Mickey Mouse ears. Things you weren’t supposed to have became the treasures you’d be buried with: When you were dug up, you’d still be clutching—or have been made to swallow—the emblems of your trade; the toys Regent’s Park had supplied you with, to keep you safe. That this had not happened to any of them did not require saying; that it had happened to others was unforgettable. Even here, in this throwback of a safe house, eating special biscuits, drinking tea.

“Two aces.”

“Cheat.”

“Sure?”

“Yes.”

“Because you can change your—”

“Cheat.”

Al displayed two aces. Avril sighed, and collected the pile.

Daisy said, “Is there anything to drink?”

“You want some more tea, love?”

“To drink.”

“Best not,” said Al. “Safe house rules.”

Daisy pursed her lips. Picked up her empty cup and studied its lack of contents: The tea had been made with bags. There was no future to be read. And the past was not to be discussed.

Avril watched her replace the cup in the exact spot she’d raised it from, thinking Daisy, Daisy. Of them all, Daisy was the one who had suffered most, the one who’d picked up the tab. And still paying it, all these years on.

Some debts you never settled. The interest crippled you; you never got close.

One of the things Avril had learned in the Park was that your joes were yours forever. This wasn’t in the handbook, but it was what your mentors taught you, what CC had told her, Love them or hate them, they’re yours for good. You’re bound to them by barbed wire, and no point trying to escape it. He’d said all this more than once. Their sins are yours, because you mould them. Give them their first communion. Confirm them in their saint’s name. Sometimes you bury them too. But you never let go of them, on the ground or in it. Best you know that from the start.

But CC was old-school, and the new school was being built before he’d vacated the premises.

Avril was old-school too, of course, recruited in this city, between Bodleian stack and lecture theatre. The fabled tap on the shoulder . . . And CC had been her mentor; his lamp had lit her way, and in his company she was always the acolyte. Come to Oxford. I’ve a plan. Which, from anyone else, might have meant a night serenading past triumphs. It’ll put you back on track. If there was one thing CC was sure of, it was that they’d all been thrown off track, but he didn’t know the half of it. They’d kept the worst hidden from him. And where was he, anyway?

Daisy picked up on her thoughts, or drew them from the air in the room. “When’ll CC get here?”

Which was the moment in the fairy tale when a name summons its owner, because here was his key in the door.

The restaurant was off Brewer Street, and thankfully wasn’t trying too hard. Devon Welles was there before her, which Louisa had expected, and had done her best to guarantee by being precisely seven minutes late: There might not be actual rules, but there were tried and tested guidelines. He was wearing an immaculately tended goatee these days, which like all goatees was a bit of a shame, and also a suit, which fitted well enough that she was probably supposed to recognise the designer. The best she could manage was clocking the price range: four figures. Whatever Devon was doing for money, he’d either climbed a ladder or crossed a line. What she remembered of him—specifically, that he’d been close to Emma Flyte—probably ruled the latter out, but like everyone else, she’d been fooled before.

She wondered if he’d opt for the hug or the kiss on the cheek, but it was a surprisingly formal handshake he offered. “Louisa. Thanks for coming.”

“It’s good to see you, Devon.”

She meant it, too. They hadn’t known each other well but she’d been impressed by him, and—style upgrade and facial hair apart—he was the same man; black skin still unlined, eyes still clear. It occurred to her that this was the first time she’d seen him since Emma’s funeral, and they hadn’t spoken then beyond brief condolences. The death of a common friend could be a barrier as much as a bridge, the more so when guilt was involved. Slough House was the reason Emma wasn’t around any more. Slough House was the book of Louisa’s dead. Inside its pages love and friendship were buried, alongside others who had mattered less to her, but who were no less gone.

Because there was wine on the table already, and Devon was pouring her a glass as she sat, she made her opening remarks to it. “I miss Emma. I didn’t know her well, though we were getting there. But I respected her and I liked her and I wish she were still around. I know you were close. I’m sorry you lost your friend.”

He said, “She said something similar about you. That you were getting to know each other, I mean. Not the stuff about respecting or liking you.”

“Thanks.”

“Yeah, Emma didn’t go in for that. But if she hadn’t liked you, you’d have known about it.” He raised his glass. “Absences.”

She tapped it with hers. “Emma.”

They drank, and Louisa said, “You left the Park on your own two legs, I heard.”

“I walked before they made me run,” he said. “When Emma quit, the writing was on the wall. They weren’t going to promote her BFF to take her place, and I didn’t want to work under whoever that turned out to be. Also, I was ready for a change. It turns out I bore quite easily.”

I’m made of sterner stuff, thought Louisa. “And your new line?”

“Personal protection services.”

“That sounds . . .”

Tact draped itself in an ellipsis.

He said, “Don’t be afraid to use the phrase ‘well dodgy.’”

“Well dodgy.”

“I can see how you’d think that. But it’s not all babysitting rich bastards. Much of the time, we’re analysts. You know, offering advice on how to manage home life when you’re in a public position. Kids’ schooling, family holidays and so on.”

“To rich bastards.”

“Well, yes, I was trying to skate that past you. Obviously rich bastards, or they’d neither need nor afford the service. Though in fact we also do some, well, not exactly pro bono, but we give reduced rates to deserving causes. As for the rest, bastards or not, none of them are scumbags. I’m sure you appreciate the distinction.”

“No guns, drugs or rabble-rousers.”

“We vet our client list. Anyone likely to end up in the Hague or the Old Bailey, we nix. Nepo-brats are an occupational hazard, as are former politicos living with death threats. But no one I’ve worked with has seen the inside of a cell.”

“That’s noble. It’s like you’re the Lone Ranger or something.”

“It’s pragmatism. Anyone with a chance of winding up behind bars is less likely to pay their bill. But not only that. If Emma—I mean, she’d have skinned me alive.”

That much was true.

“But I won’t pretend it’s a charity. It’s a well-paying gig. Ever flown in a private jet?”

“I’ve driven in a private car. And ridden on a private bike. But no, never.”

“It’s an experience.” Being in the presence of someone else’s wealth didn’t strike Louisa as the kind of experience she wanted, but Devon was clearly on a mission to impress. “And the pay’s good, like I said. And also, I’m going to cut to the chase, every so often you get to beat the crap out of a lowlife.”

“Seriously?”

“Well, no, but you get to act as if you might. And I mentioned the pay, didn’t I?”

“Often enough that tonight is on you. What’s up, Devon? I’m glad you’ve found a soft landing, but—”

“We’re recruiting.”

“Ah.”

“And your name came up.”

Which gave her something to think about while the waiter appeared and took their order. She opted for the fish; Devon for the mushroom risotto. They had enough wine for the moment, though the waiter did his best to remedy that by refilling their glasses uninvited. When he’d gone again, she picked up where they’d left off. “Came up? How did that happen?”

Welles dipped his head modestly.

“Well, thanks. I guess. But I’m not sure it’s for me.”

“Can’t know until you try. You’d be a shoo-in—there’s marksmanship as well as fitness, and you’re savvy enough to ace the paperwork. All of which is to say, it’s a serious business. We don’t just hoover up Service and forces dropouts. And I’d like to have you on my team.”

“Your team?”

“Did I skip that bit? Yeah, my team. You’d get to call me guv, or possibly sir. There’d be a certain amount of forelock tugging, some small acts of abasement. You know the drill.”

“That’s a big selling point. But seriously—”

“Want to know how much I earn?”

“Not really.”

“Low six figures. Plus a car and other perks. Want to know how much my crew earn?”

“Not really.”

“High five figures. They don’t get cars though, the sad fuckers. How much are you on, Louisa?” She added ten. He shook his head. “I was on more than that at the Park, and one of the reasons I left was finding it hard to get by. And that was before the economy tanked.”

“I have a modest lifestyle.”

“Time you could afford better. And Louisa—Slough House? Seriously? You’ve been there too long, for all the wrong reasons. You’re never going back to the Park, because they’ll never let you, and more fool them. Why spend the rest of your life paying for one mistake you made years ago? Walk away now and make some money. Close the book on Slough House. It’s a shithole, you know it is. How is Lamb, anyway?”

“You really care?”

“Nope. Round the Park, they called him Prospero, you know that?”

“Because . . . ?”

“He breaks his staff.”

“No they didn’t.”

“Yeah, okay. Would’ve been good, though. And he is a dinosaur.”

“If you mean he’s a thick-skinned bastard it’ll probably take a meteor to kill, then I’d have to agree.”

Their food arrived, in portions small enough that Louisa hoped the bill was a stinker. So maybe this was the life she was missing: being overcharged for undersized meals, while the waitstaff filled your glass before you were ready . . . And not spending the rest of the week living out of tins. A high five figure would dull the pain all right.

There were other pains, though. When Emma died, she’d been wearing Louisa’s coat, and Louisa had never quite rid herself of the notion that the two facts were connected.

For the rest of the evening, they spoke of other things, Welles apparently satisfied that he’d planted the seed. He admired her sunflower brooch. She teased him about the suit, and he told her how much it cost. He was living in Peckham, he told her; a duplex. Next year’s holiday: Machu Picchu. That they weren’t in fact talking of other things landed slowly, so maybe she wasn’t cut out for intelligence work after all. But she was enjoying his company, and he ordered a second bottle.

Later, when they were parting, he said, “Don’t think about it too long, Louisa. For your sake, not mine. Stay where you are much longer, you’ll lose the will to leave. No pun intended.”

“I appreciate the offer. Thank you.”

But don’t pass judgement on my life.

It was the last thing she needed, she thought, waiting for her Uber. But only because not a day went by that she didn’t do that for herself.

After the hugs and the handshakes, after the unshed tears, Al got down to business. “It’s good to see you, CC,” he said.

“Yes—”

“But a safe house? Seriously?”

“This is Oxford. You want to guess how many Chinese students the city hosts?” CC unwrapped himself from his scarf, and—a habit Avril recalled—swaddled his fist in it, as if he were about to punch through a window. “So why not take advantage, save ourselves a few quid?”

“But it’s not scheduled for use tonight?” Avril asked.

“Yes, I thought we could sit quietly in a corner while a debriefing occurs. No, Avvy, it’s not scheduled for use tonight. And before you ask, I know this because someone has to make sure there are custard creams and spare lightbulbs and all the rest. So I’m informed when guests are expected.”

Al said, “You’re a housekeeper now?”

“Little errands is all. A far cry from running joes in the badlands, but there’s a small sum turns up once a month, and we’ve all got ends need meeting.” He looked at Daisy. “I wouldn’t have brought you here if there was a chance we’d be disturbed.”

Daisy was gazing at his hand, as if awaiting broken glass. CC pulled the scarf free and draped it over the armchair. He’d arrived carrying a weighted bag for life; its contents, Avril gauged, comprising their supper and a bottle of something, she was guessing Irish whiskey. CC was never one for avoiding the obvious.

“You’ve been giving this some thought, then,” Avril said.

“You’re never far from my thoughts. None of you. You know that.”

“Fuck off, you old ponce,” Daisy told him, and that was that: They were together again.

The cards were tidied away, and a fresh pot of tea made. CC’s bag held a big fish pie from a nearby supermarket, bags of prepared greens, and a bottle of Bushmills. That was for later. First was talk. CC was on his feet, his posture tutorish, his back to the door. Daisy remained on the sofa, and Avril joined her. Al leaned on its arm, every atom of his aura declaring, This had better be good.

Charles Cornell Stamoran—“Stam” to most; CC to his inner circle—held the floor.

“You’ll know David Cartwright passed a while ago.”

“And good riddance,” said Al.

“Hush now,” Avril said. “He was one of the good ones.”

“Was he, though? Was he?”

“By his own lights.”

“We’re all good by our own lights, Avvy. There’s no effort involved in being good on those terms.”

“Good or bad, he’s just as dead,” CC reminded them. “And we’re not here to argue about his merits, though I think it’s fair to say, Al, that the man well knew he’d stained his hands often enough.”

“Well, maybe he made a deathbed confession and that smoothed his path to eternal light. But I heard he came apart like a jigsaw in the end. The man had no more sense of things he’d done than he knew what day of the week it was. Which is not a state for making confessions in, wouldn’t you say? No, I think David Cartwright took his past to the grave unshriven.”

CC raised an eyebrow.

Al said, “What, I don’t get to use a vocabulary?”

Daisy said, “Pitchfork,” and they all looked at her.

“That’s what we’re talking about, isn’t it? Pitchfork.”

“Yes, Daisy,” CC said. “It’s Pitchfork.”

“So glad you could make it, Diana.”

“Well, family.”

Not hers, obviously, but Peter Judd’s.

The occasion was his youngest official daughter’s eighteenth; the location Nob-Nobs, a club on the far edge of Shoreditch which, if it survived its name, would only have its décor, acoustics and bar staff to weather if it hoped to see its anniversary. Diana assumed the choice of venue was the daughter’s, though a good half of the guest list, comprising former MPs, was clearly of Judd’s devising. So many recently unseated players, she might have been backstage at a rodeo. The pasted-on expressions of merriment would have been over the top for a pantomime, but then the election wipeout wasn’t so much a memory as an ongoing trauma.

Judd seemed to be enjoying their distress enormously—it had been some time since he’d sat in the House himself, and his resignation gave him licence to proclaim, loudly and often, that he’d never been ousted by the electorate. His air of dishevelled bonhomie was as cultivated as ever, and he could, when he wanted, make for a diverting companion. But accepting his invitation had been responding to a tug on the leash. This state of affairs couldn’t be allowed to continue.

“She’s looking very . . . robust,” she continued.

“Xanthippe? Yes, she takes after her mother.” As with so many of his statements, there was no telling whether Judd believed his own words or merely expected others to. In this instance, Diana compared Judd’s dad-bellied figure to his wife’s elegant form, and reached her own conclusion as to who their daughter was taking after. Judd, meanwhile, was leaning sideways to accost a passing former Cabinet Minister, the joke he whispered provoking huge mirth. “Just think,” he said to Diana in the man’s wake. “When he has someone explain that to him, he’ll laugh even harder.”

“Always an education, PJ. But do you mind if I slip away? I’m sure the young won’t notice, and I’ve a busy day tomorrow.”

“No, you hang on. I need a word.”

There was no pretence that this was a request.

She weighed her options, but it didn’t take long—releasing herself from Judd’s web wasn’t going to be achieved by making small stands. So she smiled, sipped her wine, and sidled into a corner where she could watch the young dance and the middle-aged ogle. The music was vaguely familiar and specifically unpleasant. When a short, bespectacled one-time holder of several great offices of state unknotted his tie, wrapped it round his forehead and joined the throng on the dance floor, she wondered if Judd’s personal protection team might escort him from the premises, but had to settle for hoping the excitement would see him off.

When Judd had finished making her wait, he led her down to the cloakrooms, where there was a lobby with a two-seater sofa, a giant plastic rubber plant and a mirror in which she looked old. Passing straight through that, he led her into the disabled toilet and locked the door behind them.

“For God’s sake—”

“Oh, don’t be a schoolgirl. Anyone clocks us, they’ll think we’re screwing or doing a line. Perfect alibi.”

“One of these days, your lack of decorum’ll get you into trouble. Meanwhile, it’s just the rest of us need worry. What do you want?”

“So abrupt. Maybe we should do a line. It might relax you.”

“Peter—”

“All right, hair on. Little favour to ask, that’s all. A few words need whispering, and you’re the perfect woman for the job, what with your access to the corridors of power. And also, of course, you being a force of nature, wit and beauty any red-blooded man, and no few women, would happily lend an ear to.”

“You missed a bit,” she said.

“With tremendous dress sense.” Turning his back, he examined his reflection in the mirror, winked, then smoothed his eyebrows. “You’ll have noticed a certain jaded quality about the guest list?”

“What, the yesterday’s men? I imagined you felt more comfortable among your own kind.”

“As cruel as she is beautiful. Puts me in mind of those cards you find in phone booths. It’s true, my cohort of late has been a little on the wilted side. But then my persona’s not exactly grata round Westminster right now.”

Which was up there with Tuesday following Monday. While Judd’s history was a teeming catwalk of strange bedfellows—he would fuck a Dalek, if it was draped in scarlet ribbons—politically speaking he was now firmly among the coyote ugly, and only the desperately unshaggable would want to be seen with him in public.

“Well, feed the bloody birds,” Diana said. “You’ve been the new lot’s panto villain so long, the only surprise is they haven’t nailed you to a beanstalk.”

“Picturesquely put. You’re aware that it’s temporary?”

“We’re a democracy. All governments are temporary.”

“That would be the undergraduate answer. But what I meant was, give it a little time and the new lot, as you put it, will embrace certain realities.” Satisfied with his eyebrows, Judd turned, shot his cuffs, and leaned against the sink. “One of which is me. Electoral power is all very well, but it does tie one down to accountability and appearances and all that nonsense. After a while, you come to appreciate the quiet efficiency of influence.”

“I’m not sure that quiet efficiency is a phrase people associate with you.”

“But you’re as aware as I am that more gets done outside the public gaze than ever passes before it. And that the bedrock of our system doesn’t shift whatever colour flag we’re flying. Like it or not, Diana, you’re walking proof that we’re all subject to forces above and beyond our nationally accepted pieties. I am—well, modesty forbids. But if not one of those actual forces, I am one of those through whom it flows.”

“You mean, you’ve whored yourself out for so long and so thoroughly, you’ve lost all sense of nationhood. I think we all know that. But do you really think a new government will revert to type quite so quickly?”

“I think they’ll swiftly appreciate that their new-found allies in the shires and the suburbs might have made a difference on election day, but they’re bugger-all use when it comes to the heavy lifting of global intercourse. For that, you need experience, a willingness to accept a certain latitude when it comes to human rights, and the mother of all address books.” If he was attempting to suppress a smirk here, he wasn’t successful. “I appreciate that those qualities aren’t necessarily trumpeted from the front bench, but they’re warmly welcomed where deals are actually done. Whether that’s a London club, a Hong Kong casino or a Dubai brothel.”

“In other words, some things never change.”

“Not even the personnel, Diana. Not in any meaningful way. A few token sink estate brats aside, the paths to power are where they always were, and lead through the same school gates. And it’s difficult to maintain a stony silence when you’re side by side at a fundraiser for the alma mater. No, I’m confident that in time, relationships will flourish, friendships blossom, and my worth as a power broker come to be valued for what it is. An indispensable national asset. But until that happy day, I find myself a little short of . . . warm welcomes. Which throws me back onto your company.”

“And that’s why we’re sharing a toilet? It’s nice to be wanted, but you’d be better off strengthening bonds with your former colleagues upstairs. At least they’re not embarrassed to be seen in your company.”

“Come come. It takes more than my presence to embarrass you. No, the only thing that might would be if it became common knowledge quite how close our relationship has been. And I’m not talking about our early-days dalliance, you understand.”

She understood.

“Which brings me to my point. Excuse me while I multitask.” He stepped to the toilet, unzipped himself, and with his back to her kept on talking. “Been following the news lately?”

“No, I generally change channel and watch Friends. Of course I follow the fucking news. I’m First Desk.”

“Then you’ll know there’s dissatisfaction in certain quarters regarding the proposed UN resolution about ownership of territories in the South China Sea.”

And here it was: The second boot hitting the floor. The moment she’d known would arrive, ever since he’d told her that the money she’d spent wreaking justice on a Russian assassin had been converted from Chinese yuan.

“Now, if the UK were to indicate that it won’t be supporting such a proposition . . . that would be really, really useful.”

To his Beijing backers, he meant.

It wouldn’t be impossible to kill him here and now. Hold his head down in the bowl. The satisfaction of the moment would see her through much of what followed: arrest, trial, imprisonment. But he was still talking:

“And given my current lack of access to the places that matter, my, ah, silent partners—you remember, I told you about them—my silent partners were wondering whether you might lend your own influence to their cause. Ah, here we go.” His stream hit the bowl, and he gave a little sigh before continuing. “It would make them very happy, and you know what they say. A happy silent partner is a . . . silent silent partner.”

Diana said, “This is dangerous territory. It could easily be interpreted as treasonous.”

“Lucky for me, then, I’m simply having a private conversation with an old friend.” This was accompanied by a hefty shake. “A friend, I might say, who is herself compromised beyond her ability to report our conversation without revealing her indebtedness to those partners we’re discussing.” He flushed, then tucked himself away and zipped up. When he turned around Diana stepped aside, allowing him access to the sink.

“So if we follow this train to its station, what we’re left with is quite straightforward. Should you find it within yourself to drop the appropriate word in the appropriate pairs of ears, then any possibility of an embarrassing indiscretion or two ups and disappears. Whoof!”

She said, “Tell me you’re joking.” From the lobby came the sound of footsteps and a cackle of laughter. The door handle rattled. “Fuck. Off.” Someone fucked off. Judd, meanwhile, was smiling the beatific smile of one for whom joking was a foreign language. In this case, probably Mandarin. “I’m a civil servant. I don’t steer the government, I abide by its rule of law. The idea that I might dictate policy is ludicrous.”

“We both know you’re more than that. Your word carries weight. And you’ve more experience than the cabinet put together. These people are all at sea and desperately need a navigator. The few sensible minds among them are aware of this. You’ll be listened to. And it won’t be difficult to construct a sound, real-world reason why Britain should want to ally itself with the next great global power, instead of the United Fading States.”

Diana shook her head. “They may turn out to be another coalition of gonks, but they’ve been itching for power for a decade and a half. Whereas I’ve been First Desk for the last sixteen prime ministers, or whatever it is, all of them from the other side. They don’t look on me as an ally. It’s a wonder I still have a job.”

“Well, why don’t you just do your best?” Judd was working the mirror again, straightening his tie. “All I ask.”

“All you ask, in its bare bones, is treason.”

“That’s a very narrow-minded way of looking at a business proposition. I’m a patriot, Diana. I would die for this country, should the need arise. But until it does, I have a family to feed and a career to pursue. And this is currently the course of action that satisfies those needs. I trust you won’t make things difficult for me.”

Again, the image seized her of his head down that toilet bowl. An Eton education: It wouldn’t be his first time . . . The last feeble thrashings of his limbs. A curtain pulled down.

“What’s your timetable on this . . . fantasy?”

“It’s oh-so-tempting to say twenty-four hours. But you’ve a little longer than that. Shall we say the end of the week? Less dramatic, but we can’t have everything.”

There was a knock at the door. “Are you all right in there?”

“Oh, we most surely are,” Judd called. “Vacating now.” He looked at Diana. “Unless you need to . . . ?”

She shook her head, not trusting herself to speak.

“Righty-ho then. Back to the fray.”

As if he’d choreographed it in advance, Tina Turner’s “The Best” was powering the dance floor as they walked back up the stairs.

Pitchfork was what they were talking about, because Pitchfork was what they were, or had been. No: were. A hard lesson Avril had learned, that you didn’t stop being part of something just because it was over. However much you’d changed in the years between.

And the years had made their mark on this quartet. Al Hawke least of them, outwardly; there remained something of his near-namesake in his bearing, in his nose too. He was tall, and age hadn’t bent him yet; there was still strength in those arms, power in those legs, and his eyes were as clear and cold as a frozen lake. In his grey chinos, white shirt and dark jacket—tonsured like a monk—he looked, and still moved, like a man with purpose, someone in whose way you’d not want to be standing. But an element of doubt had moved in with the passing years. If Al was still the man she’d want watching her back, should such a need return, he was no longer capable of the feats of stamina that had once been his trademark. And while this was hardly a surprise, or shouldn’t have been, the fact that he too had grown aware of this pained her. The Als of this world should remain convinced of their strength. It was one of the things that made them Als.

As for Daisy, even her lost years hadn’t stolen her beauty, though it lay below the surface now, hidden from casual glances. Hair that had been long and dark was short and grey, framing a pinched face that once had been softly rounded; her eyes, too, no longer glittered. The Irish lilt was gone. It had never been pure affectation—Daisy’s grandmother had been from Cork, and the accent was hers for the taking—but had been discarded now, as if she had shed anything that might anchor her to the past. Indeed, she might easily have shed her whole life, leaving an empty skin on the pavement. As ever, that memory provoked anger: that here was someone who had given the best part of herself to her country, and in the giving had ensured that lives were saved and buildings stayed standing; that there were bombs that had never gone off. And in return, here she was; a damaged person allowed to become lost. If they hadn’t reached her in time, she’d have ended her life in that dismal no man’s land below the overpass, as much a discard as the broken cars surrounding her. If not for us, Avril thought, and then thought: But who put her there to begin with?

Avril herself had grown old in her own way; not so much a diminishment, more a concentration. Or so she hoped. Certainly there had been no dilution of feeling. Emotions coursed through her the way they always had done, and there were days she opened her eyes in the morning and thought herself sixteen again. But this never lasted more than a second or two. And those days were growing rarer.

Whether CC still found within himself the remnants of his younger being, it was hard to say. Right now, he had the air of a tutor addressing a seminar group. They might have been young adults, wary of disappointing him.

“Pitchfork was the beginning of the end for us. All talk of Avvy being a Second Desk, of Al moving into security—”

“I never wanted that—”

“But it would have been a promotion, Al, and it went away. As for me, it was the last op I was given. Nobody said anything, but everyone knew, and the sooner I accepted it gracefully, the less embarrassment there was all round. And Daisy, well, I’m sorry, my love. It was a bad time, and none of us want to rehash it. But we were made pariahs, and why? Because we had a nasty job to do, and we did it well. Dougie Malone was a psychopath, but the gods in their glory decreed that we use him, and use him we did. And for that, we paid with our careers.”

“CC,” Avril said softly. “We know all this.”

“You’ll allow me my tendencies, love. One of them being a fondness for clarity.”

Al said, “Much more of this, and I’ll be opening that bottle before we’ve warmed the microwave up.”

“We’ll be drinking soon enough. But fine, let’s hurry along. Like all operations good and bad, Pitchfork came to an end of its useful life, we all know why.”

“Good Friday.”

“Yes, thank you, Good Friday came and went, and in its aftermath the powers that be heaved a sigh of relief and put Pitchfork out of our misery. With full honours. Charles Partner was First Desk, and signed off on it himself. David Cartwright was there, as were the minister, the Cabinet Secretary, a lawyer or two. The meeting was Mozart level, the highest classification at the time, which meant no minutes were kept. The recordings were wiped, no transcript made. Not even a record of who was present. This nasty slice of history was buried deep as it would go, and curses muttered over its remains. In a better-arranged world, Pitchfork would never have been mentioned again. The very word would have dropped from the dictionaries. But that’s not what happened, was it?”

He gazed round: the expectant tutor. His students refused to cooperate.

“I’m to do all the work, eh? All right. What happened was, the rumour factory got into business. Mutterings on Fleet Street. The Sunday Times investigation. Panorama. All of it accompanied by absolute rebuttals in the House and complete stonewalling outside of it. As for the Park, well, the Park did what the Park does and denied Pitchfork absolutely, dismissing the rumours that the Service had aided and abetted a psychotic murderer as sectarian venom designed to undermine the Agreement. While we were cast out into the cold, because nobody, and especially not the Park, likes having reminders of its guilt hung round its neck like a four-headed albatross.” He paused. The other three heads of the burdensome bird remained fixed as they were: Daisy’s staring into space, Al’s looking straight at him and Avril’s concentrating on the floor, though likely seeing something that wasn’t carpet. “Then time’s winged whirligig brung in its changes, and one sacred day Dougie Malone was killed, thanks be to God, and in the ten years since the whole topic’s dropped off the agenda, which hasn’t improved our situation any. And what I’m wondering now is—what I’m wondering now is, have the three of you been listening to a word I’ve said?”

It was Al who answered. “That we have.”

“And?”

There was more mutinous silence.

“I said—”

“We heard you,” said Al. He glanced at Avril.

Avril said, “‘Not even a record of who was present.’”

“I’m glad you were paying attention.”

“And yet you told us who was there.”

From outside came the noise of a wailing child, carried past their window at the speed of a trundling pram.

Al said, “How, exactly?”

CC, no longer the rambling tutor but the professional fact deliverer, said, “The late David Cartwright, presumably unknown to anyone but himself, recorded the proceedings. He kept the tape hidden in a box-safe among the books in his library. It turned up at college a few weeks ago when his library was delivered there.”

“And you’re the only one who knows about it?” Avril said.

“About the contents, yes.”

“But not the box?”

CC said, “His grandson knows. There’s a smart girl working in the library, she put him on to it. But as far as they’re concerned, the box has been destroyed, and all it held was dirty pictures.”

“That’s weak,” said Avril.

“It only has to hold a little while.”

“. . . Why so?”

“I’m not a great believer in things happening for a reason. But in this instance, it seems quite clear we’ve been given an opportunity to achieve redress.”

Only Daisy was unbothered by this, and remained staring into space.

Al and Avril shared a look.

Al said, “What are you saying, CC? You want to make this stuff public? Because I’m not sure you’ve thought through the implications.”

“I think I have.”

“If there was wrongdoing—Christ, what am I saying? We know there was wrongdoing, we were part of it. We were Operation Pitchfork. Malone might be dead, but his deeds live on, yes? If we make this public, force the Park to admit its complicity in murder and torture and all the rest of it, where does that leave us? Because I don’t want to be making headlines my time of life.”

Avril said, “Have you found religion, Charles? Or a black spot on your lung? Because whatever it is, this urge to make a clean breast, bear in mind you’re not the only one this involves. If you go to the wall, we all go.”

“No one’s going to the wall. Can I make that clear? I have no plans to go down in flames, and if I had, I wouldn’t take you with me.” CC raised a palm, as if inviting a high five, then let it fall. It was an oddly theatrical gesture. “But we’re in possession of proof of something the Park has long denied, that it was responsible for an operation which gave a madman free rein to indulge in carnage. They need to know we have it. And we need to know what they’re prepared to offer to keep it in its box.”

“So. Just so we’re on the same page. You want to blackmail the Park about the details of an operation we were part of.”

“Who better?”

“To threaten we’ll go public—”

“With proof.”

“Go public with the details of an operation we helped implement.”

“That involved at least thirteen murders. That we know of.”

“And rape,” said Daisy. “Let’s not forget rape.”

Avril said, “No, CC. It’s madness.”

“We’ll be waving a stick, that’s all. All they need to know is, we have a stick. And they’ll back down.”

“And what does backing down look like? You expect an apology? ‘We’re sorry we made you work with a piece of human detritus like Dougie Malone?’ We agreed to do it, CC. We might not have liked it, but that was never in the job description, and it’s late to complain about it now. We knew what we were getting into.”

“Did we? Did we really? Because nobody spelled out the consequences, or I don’t remember them doing so. I remember David Cartwright polishing his glasses while he lectured us on the greater good. About making sacrifices for the men and women in the street. For the good of the country. And he’s dead now, and I’m sure he gave the country his best, but he died in a five-star nursing home between clean sheets, and as long as he had his marbles, he lived in a house with a wrap-around garden.” CC was tiring of being on his feet; at any rate he reached out a hand and steadied himself against the wall. “But maybe it’s not the job we’d be complaining about, Avvy. Maybe it’s the way we were treated afterwards. I don’t know about the rest of you, but old age—which I’m a little further into than you are, so you’ll bow to my greater experience—is an absolute fucker. Absolute. Fucker. I never expected to end my days in luxury, but I didn’t expect to be worried about turning the heating on in the dead of winter. Or making a single-serving meal last two nights. I gave my best years, same as you did, and didn’t ask for a lot in return. But I didn’t expect to be given so little. And don’t tell me the three of you are faring better, because I’ll know that for a story.”

They let this settle before Al said, “I had to sell my fishing gear. Didn’t get half what it was worth, but I needed a winter coat. And they’re not cheap.”

Avril said, “I took in a lodger. It didn’t work out.”

Daisy said, “I lived in a gutter for eighteen months.”

They fell quiet for a while until Avril said, “Okay, you win.”

Only Daisy laughed.

Avril looked at CC and said, “I’m not disagreeing with your analysis. But we can’t do this. We’d be opening a can of snakes.”

“A can that needs opening.”

“We could end up in prison.”

“I’m not going to pretend there’s no risk involved.”

“I don’t want to die in a cell.”

“And I don’t want to live on baked beans and a two-bar fire.”

“It doesn’t have to be one or the other.”

“Glad you see it that way. But I’ve ten years on you, and frankly, I’m running out of alternatives.”

“Are you dying?”

“No. This isn’t about going out with a bang. It’s about . . . avoiding a whimper. They owe us, Avril. You, me and Al. And especially Daisy.”

Al said, “We’ve mentioned prison. But that’s the least of it, if the Park decides not to play ball.”

“If it was just one of us,” CC said, “a lone wolf, yes, they might try to bury their mess. But four of us? Our ages? They’d be mad to try. It would make a worse stink than what they’re trying to keep under wraps. Besides, we didn’t survive Northern Ireland without knowing how to make a brush-past.”

“A brush-past? What were you planning on doing, dropping a note through First Desk’s front door? We’ll be on seven kinds of CCTV before we’re in her postcode.”

Avril said, “Why are you even talking like that? It’s not going to happen.”

“I have her email address,” said CC.

“Her personal email?”

“The young woman in the library I mentioned, she used to be Taverner’s PA. And she doesn’t always keep an eye on her phone.”

Avril said, “You looted her mobile? That’s a serious violation of her privacy.”

“Wasn’t it, though? On the other hand, we have, collectively, abetted numerous murders. Scrolling through someone’s contact list doesn’t make me feel I’ve plumbed the depths of misbehaviour.”

Daisy made a noise which might have been a giggle. When Avril threw her a glance the sound was history; the face that issued it blank.

“Anyway,” CC said. “That’s it. Why we’re here. I’m not suggesting we shake them down for millions, just a fair sum. Al?”

“No. I’m sorry, CC. But no.”

“Avvy?”

“You know we can’t. It’s madness.”

“Daisy?”

All three turned to her, as she broke off her study of nothing much.

“I think we should do it,” she said.

CC breathed something. It might have been “Tied vote.”

“Daisy, love,” Avril said gently. “We can’t. You know why.”

“But they owe us.”

“That they do,” said CC.

“They owe me.”

“We did our jobs,” said Avril. “We did our duty. We can’t throw that away now.”

“Like they threw us away? Why not?”

Because because because, thought Avvy. You know why not.

CC was reaching for the Bushmills, breaking its seal. “I think we need this now, don’t you? There’s no ice, you’ll be relieved to hear.”

“We haven’t made a decision,” said Al. “There’s nothing to toast.”

“I love you all,” CC said. No one had been expecting that. “And this will be fine. Trust me.”

He began to pour: good big healthy measures.

“Please don’t say what you’re going to say,” Avril said.

“I’m sorry, Avvy.”

“You’ve already done it, haven’t you? You’ve set it all in motion.”

“It’s what Daisy wants. And she, more than any of us, deserves recompense.”

“This will destroy us. You’ve destroyed us.”

“No,” said CC. “I’m making us whole again.”

Slough House, coming on midnight, and flickering screens were strobing Roddy Ho’s form and throwing shapes—he looked like a disco king, if only there were an audience to admire him. But the way of the data warrior is a lonely one, and his keyboard his only companion. Still, it was a comfort to know there were others like him, out in the darkened city—men on their own, hunched over laptops, putting the world to rights—and it was hard not to believe that they sensed his presence as they went about their duty; that as they spread their virtual seed hither and yon, they were following his path, if not so stylishly.

Were less tasked, too, with vital missions. Earlier in the day, Lamb had pleaded with Roddy to attempt the impossible—as per—and then, secure in the knowledge that the RodJob was on the case, had told him, bantz, to fuck off till it was done. You had to hand it to the old man, he could do a straight face like no one else. But anyway, here was Roddy, monitors alight with life, an orange Post-it affixed to the nearest—he’d always enjoyed digital dancing in the dark. The hummingbird flies by night, he told himself, rubbing his arm. He knew this for a fact. He’d googled it.

But nightbird or not, cracking the Service’s online traffic was no task for lightweights. It took your Stan Lees, your George Lucases, your Roddy Hos, to achieve this level of creative brilliance, and careful pacing was required. So on the clock ticked, and on the RodMeister laboured, weaving a passage through a maze of encrypted corridors, many littered with the virtual equivalent of IEDs, triggering which would set floodlights converging on him . . . A mental image formed of Roddy scaling a high-wired fence, caught in the cross-beams of conning-towers . . . A blaze of bullets; a torn tattered body; a beautiful corpse hanging by the ankles. It would take a heart of granite not to weep.

“The fuck you still here for?”

Roddy gave a note-perfect imitation of a man squeaking in fright.

“I . . . What are you still here for? I mean, the fuck still here for?”

Shirley was chewing gum with her hands in her pockets, like a cartoon rendition of a ten-year-old. She must have been up in her office, because she hadn’t come through the back door: No one did that without a ruckus save Lamb, and even he sounded like a walrus attacking a lobster pot most times. Her hair, what there was of it, was tufted into spikes, which had provoked Lamb into asking, Is that fashion or chemo? Roddy was on the verge of echoing him, but luckily Shirley spoke first. “No law against staying late. Besides, I wasn’t working. Creep.”

In fact, she’d been asleep, though the end result was the same: pushing midnight, still at work. She should be on overtime.

Ho had been eating pizza, so she helped herself to a slice from the box on his desk, nearly but not quite tipping it to the floor, and leaned against the wall to eat, choosing a spot where she could see his monitors and attempt to work out what he was doing. This, she accepted, was unlikely. It was akin to watching performance art, which in theory Shirley approved of—it allowed the talentless to call themselves artists, which appealed to her anarchic streak—but in practice was appalling shit that no one understood. But at least Roddy, if he didn’t volunteer explanation, could be coerced into divulging one. Besides: pizza.

He said, “Yeah, this is classified?”

“We, like, literally do the same job? Duh-brain.”

Roddy looked at his screens. There was nothing on them that would mean anything to Dander. Put him in front of them and he was looking at trapdoors and trolleys, tracks and tramlines; he was Indiana Jones on a subterranean railway, avoiding poison darts. But all Shirley would see was streams of glowing numbers. For a moment he hovered between two worlds, the one he mostly lived in and the one he suspected Shirley and everyone else inhabited. Perhaps if they understood more about his world he’d feel more at home in theirs. But the moment passed, and they were on opposite sides of a chasm again. He said, “If I was allowed to tell you about it . . .”

“Yeah?”

“I still wouldn’t.”

“Asshat.”

The pizza box chose that moment to topple to the floor, landing contents-side down as the laws of physics dictated. Both stared at this for a second, then resumed their glare-off.

Shirley said, “This was Lamb’s little job?”

“Yeah. I mean no. And it’s not little.”

“Breaking and entering, right?”

“Like I said. Classified.”

“Into some place or person’s records.”

“Above your pay grade. Loser.”

“Which means you must’ve written it down. Because no way do you remember details. Loser.”

She stuffed the last piece of crust into her mouth without taking eyes off Roddy, who stared back unflinchingly, almost, until a slight tremble gave him away. Then he grabbed for the Post-it, almost managing to cram it into his mouth before Shirley had him by the wrist, twisting his hand and unwrapping his fingers, forcing him to relinquish it.

“Munchkin!”

“Watch your language. Or I’ll twat you.”

She unwrapped the orange paper square while Roddy stared in murderous hatred. “I’m doing this for your own benefit,” she explained. “Secrets between colleagues is not a good idea. I mean, okay, we’re spies, but . . .”

Unscrunched, the Post-it turned out to carry two words. A name.

“Next question,” Shirley said. “Who the fuck is Julian Tanner?”

When Avril woke in the early hours, it was only partly because of Daisy’s bad dream: She had known putting head to pillow that if sleep came, it would come briefly. Pitchfork had sunk its prongs into her mind, where Pitchfork did what a pitchfork does: It shifted, lifted and sieved. Daisy’s whimperings might have had the same source but she had no coherent report to make, so Avril held her until she grew quiet again, and then lay while darkness skulked outside the window, slowly surrendering its ghosts.

Pitchfork was the operation, and also the code name of its subject. Dougal—Dougie—Malone, long-time IRA enforcer, and the owner of a well-earned reputation for brutality, fostered not simply by his keenness for punishment beatings, but by the methods he chose to implement them: the hammer, the car jack, the crowbar. A short, narrow man, he carried himself like an unpulled punch, and to look into his eyes was to set your darkness echoing, as if his presence dared you unleash the devil in yourself. For two decades he was the Provos’ iron fist in its studded glove, seeking out dissent in its ranks and pounding it flat. He had raped at least seven women. And for half the time he enjoyed such power he had been an informer for the British intelligence service, an asset so highly valued that he had a team of four assigned to his care and security: herself, CC, Al and Daisy. If he was Pitchfork, so were they.

All spies together, then, though it hurt Avril to admit Malone into their company. She would rather focus on their difference: Malone had become a spy not to uphold a cause, nor even only for the money, but to gratify evil urges. The dark was where they all worked, she could acknowledge that. But it was where Malone lived, and where he found his joys, chief among these being the death of his enemies, or some of them, because it would have taxed even his endless hatred to murder everyone. He did his best, though, directing his IRA death squad at those whom he named as informers, partly to protect his own position, but mostly because that was who he was, a man who delighted in torture and murder and rape; and who, when it was over, was removed from the Province and settled in Cumbria under a false identity, with a rumoured £80,000 a year in a Gibraltar bank account. Fifteen years later, he was found dead in his own garage, murdered by a method he’d pioneered himself on two luckless colleagues, Stephen Regan and Bernard Docherty; Provos both, and in need of jail time, but who ended up stains on a concrete floor for looking sideways at Dougal Malone.

Last night, three drinks down, CC had offered a toast: that its subject roast in hell.

“Dougie Malone, the nastiest bastard who ever walked the earth. Who helped bring about the arrest of thirty-four terrorists bent on wreaking carnage both sides of the Irish Sea, thereby saving the lives of innocent civilians—and when he wasn’t doing that, damn his hide, was running his own little nutting squad with our help and protection, whose victims we could have forewarned, or offered escape routes.”

His glass trembled.

“So here’s to the numbers game, played for the greater good. And here’s to the nameless heroes who put Malone down. But most of all, here’s to Dougie dead. May our Pitchfork even now be tossed on a bigger one, and the devil himself be giggling at the sight.”

He downed his whiskey. Daisy had started working on hers before he was halfway through. Avril and Al, though, held their hands.

It was Al that CC focused on. “Come on, Alastair. Empty your glass.”

“I’ll not drink to another man’s death.”

“Not even Malone’s? Can you think of a man deserved it more?”

“Leave him be,” said Avril.

“What is this, a mutiny? An uprising?”

“No more than you deserve. Jesus, what were you thinking? What have you done? We’ll wind up in a pit of sorrows.”

“Not if we’re careful.”

“And I’ll not see Daisy back in a dark place.”

“I can speak for myself,” Daisy said.

“Of course. I didn’t mean to—”

“And I’ve said we should do it.”

“But Avvy’s right,” Al said. “Sorry, love. But this is a door better left closed. There’s no knowing what’ll come crawling through it.”

Our own past lives, thought Avril. Our own misdeeds.

“I don’t care,” said Daisy. “CC’s right. They owe us.”

She glanced around, causing Avril to do likewise. At that moment the safe house stood for all of their dwellings; its doors too near their opposite walls, its ceilings too near the floors. When you walked up its stairs, you had to tuck your elbows in. This was what they’d been left with; any greater ambitions they might have had had been packed into storage long ago. It was true—the Park owed them. But collecting on that debt could bring all their roofs crashing down.

CC said, “I was careful. I used a newly created email address on a public, anonymous computer. The Service can track it to source, but all they’ll find is ‘guest user.’ We’re secure.”

“You sent a copy of the tape?”

“An extract. Enough that First Desk will know what it is.” He had recorded several minutes’ worth onto his phone and attached the file to his email, he told them, proud of his expertise.

In the absence of other comfort, they’d drunk to that.

Light was busy in the room now, and traffic amassing its battalions. Daisy was sleeping, or pretending well enough. Avril slipped out of bed and shuffled her feet into unlaced trainers. The morning might be packed with more than the usual amount of regret, but it had to be got through, same as always.

“Guess what?” Shirley asked.

“No,” said Louisa, and carried on past the kitchen, up the stairs, into her office. Everything there reminded her of yesterday, and foreshadowed tomorrow. Hanging her bag on her chair, she booted her desktop up—how many people in London, slow horses not included, still used desktops? Maybe eight. Shirley entered without knocking. “I said no.”

Shirley closed the door. “Lamb’s got Roddy hacking Doctor Desk’s emails.”

“I don’t do cryptic crosswords and I haven’t had coffee yet. Bugger off and annoy someone else.”

“Julian Tanner, that’s his real name.”

“Is whose real name? No, forget it. Bugger off.”

“Doctor Desk’s.”

Doctor Desk was the ex officio nickname of whoever was holding Regent’s Park’s stethoscope.

Louisa had more than enough to be getting on with. First and least was her actual job: Lamb’s latest attempt to see if the human head might explode when subjected to too much useless information. Prison was known to radicalise younger inmates; no one was holding the headlines over that insight. What interested Lamb was the number of anti-radicalisation groups that had consequently sprung into being, their attentions focused on incarcerated youth, offering support, alternatives, help upon release—anything to divert them from the path to extremism.

“Sounds a good idea,” she’d said.

“Yeah, the thing about good ideas? There’s always some fucker’ll bend them out of shape.”

Because—his view—if you had an interest in recruiting halfway-radicalised hotheads, getting the prison system to identify them for you sounded like a shortcut. Or maybe that’s just your twisted outlook, she’d wanted to say, but why bother? You’d have more luck talking Lamb into changing his shirt than his opinion. Especially when clinging to it meant him keeping on doing nothing, and someone else pulling a whole new wagonload of mind-currying paperwork.

So that was the job in hand—due diligence checks on almost certainly legitimate social enterprises—while a more pressing concern was running through last night’s conversation with Devon Welles. The door’s open. Good to know.

Meanwhile her actual door was closed, and Shirley leaning against it. “You think there’s something wrong with him?”

“With Lamb?”

“Yeah.”

“How long have you got?”

There was a muffled knock, and Shirley edged aside. “Okay if I come in?” Lech said, coming in, then noticed Shirley. “Or am I interrupting?”

“No it isn’t. But no, you’re not.”

“That’s actually ruder to me than it is to you,” Shirley explained to Lech, “because I was already here.”

“Would you both get lost? I have work to do.”

“Lamb’s got Roddy hacking Doctor Desk’s emails,” Shirley said.

“You think there’s something wrong with him?” Lech asked, hanging his bag on the nearest chair.

Louisa closed her eyes and counted to three. Nothing changed. “Why would Lamb wanting Doctor Desk’s emails mean there’s anything wrong with him?” she asked wearily.

“Because that’s how he operates,” said Shirley.

“It is how he operates,” Lech confirmed.

“If you want to crash in my room, the least you can do is not agree with Shirley.”

Ash appeared. “Is this a meeting?”

“No.”

“Then how come you’re . . . meeting?”

“It happened by accident,” Louisa said. “And it’s over. All of you, out. I’ve a phone call to make.”

There was grumbling but also exodus, an Old Testament coupling. She’d thought she was about to call Devon, but it turned out she was wrong. River answered on the third ring. “Louisa.”

“How’s the patient?”

“I’m . . . okay. Thanks.”

“Had your all-clear yet?”

Which would come from Doctor Desk. If Lamb was hijacking the medic’s email traffic, the verdict on River was the probable cause. Not that Lamb would care, but he’d want to be first to know.

“Not yet. But it’ll be okay. I’m fine.”

The flatness of his tone suggested otherwise.

It occurred to Louisa, not for the first time, that River might be her oldest friend. Partly this was due to the emotional downsizing Slough House required—if you didn’t shutter your horizons, the view would drive you mad—but not only that. There might have been something there, once, and its ghost lingered. “No,” she said. “You’re bothered. Want to talk about it?”

Which would at least distract her from her own impending decision.

“. . . That’s okay. Thanks.”

She said, “Cool. Offer’s open,” and wondered how soon she could disconnect; a question whose answer came from above, in the shape of pounding on the ceiling, accompanied by a strangled version of what might have been her name. “But it seems I’m needed upstairs.”

“Yeah, good luck with that.”

The last time River opened his heart to her, he’d been worried about his grandfather. But that train had left the station: Louisa had been there when they’d buried the old man, and while she’d attended less dramatic funerals, it was clear that David Cartwright was beyond causing problems. Lamb, on the other hand, was still among the quick, and when she arrived at his door was bowed over his desk like a Francis Bacon study in onanism. It took a second for her to realise he was engaged in the act of darning his socks while still wearing them, except for “darning” read “applying duct tape.”

“Adds years,” he said. “You wouldn’t believe the savings.”

“I’ve often wondered how you fund your wardrobe.”

Though it was accepted office lore that he raided charity bins.

Lamb hauled himself upright with the effort another man might have used to land a marlin. “Spoken to Cartwright lately?”

“We’re in touch.”

“More than he is with me.” Lamb sighed and shook his head: You raise them, you send them into the world, and do they phone, do they write? “Too busy playing doctors and nurses with young Baker. Been meaning to offer condolences on that score, by the way. Always thought you were in with a chance, especially since Sid’s, you know, ‘accident.’” He waggled an index finger at his right temple. “Head wounds, best case scenario, if you’re not left a vegetable, you’re borderline mental. Not judging. But I wouldn’t share a bed with one.”

“That’s not likely to come up, is it?” said Louisa.

“Bit hurtful, but I’ll let it pass. Anyway, thought you’d like to be the”—he paused, and counted on his fingers—“fifth to know. If Cartwright’s left anything of value in his drawers, you get first pick.”

“He’s not coming back?”

“Turns out his warranty’s lapsed. And the Park’s not picking up the tab if that toxic doorknob does for him.”

She said, “You’ve seen his medical report.”

“Better than that. I’ve seen the instruction his medical officer received, from Taverner, to bin him. Taverner already told me he was for the chop, but let me think it was Doctor Desk’s decision, which is an interesting lie, don’t you think?”

“Interesting?”

“Because it wasn’t necessary. I mean, the fuck do I care who pulls Cartwright’s plug? And why’s she doing it anyway? If she hates his guts, why turn him loose? It torments him more being here. Even if he doesn’t realise it himself.”

Louisa was aware that her role was to supply prompts while Lamb thought out loud. This was usually Catherine’s destiny, but no doubt it would become clear why she’d been chosen instead. Unless it didn’t. “Anything else?”

“Yeah, she bought me a bottle. I mean, talk about uncharacteristic behaviour. This is a woman who smokes more of my fags than I do.” This triggered a deep response: His hand disappeared between two of his shirt buttons, scratched vigorously, then reappeared holding a cigarette. Tucking it between his lips he went on, “She drops three lit matches in my lap. Says she’s got a grievance pending, which is about as likely to give a cat a sleepless night as make her worry, and she tells me about Cartwright, and she mentions that you’re out shopping for a new job, which so what? So no, it was specifically Cartwright she wanted me to know about, which means she wants me to tell him he’s surplus to requirements so he’ll be looking for a way back in. Open to persuasion.” His eyes sparked. “And that’s it. She needs him to do something for her. Something off-book, so probably dodgy. The sly monkey.”

Louisa said, “She said what now? About me?”

“Don’t change the subject. Which is, what’s she got lined up for Cartwright? Bearing in mind he’d have trouble setting fire to a petrol pump.”

There was little point pursuing any topic other than the one that gripped Lamb. “Are you sure you’re not seeing a conspiracy where there isn’t one?”

“What, the way a hammer thinks everything looks like a thumb? Yeah. Except we’re talking about Taverner, who if she tells you the time means she’s faking an alibi.”

“So . . . She wants River junked regardless of his medical just to leave him open to some other scheme she has in mind?”

“Yeah, which part of that doesn’t make sense?”

She’d been in Slough House too long, because none of it didn’t. “Okay. So what are you planning?”

“Me? I plan to light this thing, and maybe do some more tailoring.” He tapped the cigarette still hanging from his lip, then picked up the reel of tape. “My collar could do with reinforcing.”

“So I’m here because . . . ?”

He rolled his eyes. “Can you lot never keep up? You’re here, learning this from me, so you can find out what Taverner’s got in mind for Cartwright.”

Which explained why it was her, not Catherine, in the room. “Is that with a view to helping or hindering him?”

“Whichever causes me least aggravation.”

“But you want her to reverse her decision? About River not coming back?”

He had found a lighter, and answered her by clicking it to no effect.

Louisa said, “Why should I? Like you said, he’ll be better off in the wild. So why would I help you keep him here?”

“Because that’s what he wants, poor sod. Closest he’ll get to living his dream. Back at his desk, imagining he’s protecting the nation. Happy as Lazarus.”

“Larry.”

“He came back from the dead, didn’t he? Mind you, one place he’s never going is the Park, not while Taverner’s in charge, but that penny hasn’t dropped yet and probably never will. Whereas you—your penny’s in the well, isn’t it? Made your wish yet?”

She had, even if she only knew it this moment. “I’m leaving.”

“So this can be your farewell present.”

“To him or you?”

His lighter flared, and he applied it to his cigarette before tossing it over his shoulder.

“I’ll get started, shall I?”

“Soon as you like,” said Lamb.

It doesn’t matter how you wind your clock, time comes out different lengths. The night River had just endured was one of his longest, and as it approached its end he couldn’t decide which had been worse; the hours spent awake, staring into nothingness, or the minutes he’d been asleep, dreaming furtive versions of his grandfather. Stam’s words had spiralled through both states—We all have things we’d like to hide in boxes. It doesn’t undo all the good in our lives. But he’d already known that, hadn’t he? Over the past few years, River had come to understand that the grandfather he’d adored had harboured a dark side. Had made ruthless decisions, reached brutal conclusions. Neither his favourite gardening gloves nor his moth-butchered cardigan could cover up a life lived on Spook Street. But this was not new information: River had known it was there, awaiting acceptance.

But it was the banality of this new item, that the O.B. had used pornography, that River found hard to take in. He was neither innocent nor a prude—the internet had inured his generation to degrees of porn that even a Victorian might have found shocking—but something rang false, and as he rose from the bed Sid had vacated earlier, as he showered and brushed his teeth and chose clothes, it became clear what this was, an epiphany that would have arrived sooner if he’d been on his game. It was that the old man had hidden his stash among his books. That was what was unfathomable; that his grandfather had—here was the word—sullied his library with porn. Because he wouldn’t have done that. There were nooks and corners, angles and crannies, a hundred places where he might have filed this lesser secret. He would not have chosen to include it among the shelves so dear to his heart—no, if he’d hidden something among his books, it was because he wanted it found. That was the spook’s code; everything you did should be read backwards. David Cartwright would have known his bookcases would be assessed and pored over, if not by River himself then by a Service archivist, or a book dealer. His box-safe would come to light, its contents be unpacked. There was no version of his grandfather that would have allowed his pornography to be revealed in such a way.

Stam had lied to him.

When he arrived downstairs there was a note on the kitchen table from Sid, whose phone he’d heard ringing an hour ago. See you later. Which gave him the opportunity to head out without explaining where and why. Living with Sid was everything he’d hoped for, but that didn’t mean he wanted life to be an open book. Jacket on, car keys in hand, he left. His own phone started ringing before he reached his car.

London is London, every last inch of it, but some parts more than others. Crossing the Thames, Sid Baker found herself gazing down at the rolling water, none of which would be in the city for more than—what—twelve hours? A day? And yet it was the essence of the capital; always London, but always passing through. As if the whole could be captured by a single moving part, the entire story held within a verb.

She was not sure she had entertained such transports before her accident, but it didn’t much matter either way. She was who she was now, and that was all there was to it.

Diana Taverner was waiting on the South Bank, not far from the Globe. Legend had it there was a streak of pigeon shit, a plastic transfer, affixed to the bench she occupied, effectively reserving it for her own use. Given that the bench sat on a small patch unmonitored by CCTV, and was thus one of the few places in the city where you could kiss your lover, adjust your underwear or pick your nose without someone making notes, this was a valuable resource, but Sid found she was no longer sure about such facts; whether they were rumours in the service of a myth Taverner spread about herself, or part of the Park’s carefully maintained reality, with props supplied by the Tricks and Toys department. In the end, you could never be sure where a story originated, only where it ended up: trapped between the pages of a book, like a pressed flower or an ancient bus ticket. Moving carefully, the way you might approach an uncaged tiger, Sid reached the bench and sat.

Behind them, the usual parade unfurled: visitors and residents, heroes and trolls.

After a second or two Taverner turned and assessed Sid in a way that might easily seem rude—actually, there was no “seem” about it—but also contained something of ownership, as if Taverner were checking an item of personal property, recently loaned to someone unreliable. Sid had to resist the impulse to stick her tongue out, or at least she hoped she’d resisted that impulse. There were occasions when she wasn’t sure whether she was having a thought or acting upon it, as if her injury had left her with blurred borders. River could be studiously non-reactive at such moments, when she might have said out loud something she’d meant just to think, but then again, he’d presumably not react if she hadn’t actually spoken. These were the rabbit holes she navigated daily.

Taverner said, “You’re looking . . . well.”

“For someone who’s been shot in the head, you mean.”

“You should learn how to accept a compliment. Trust me, there’ll come a time they’ll stop being offered.”

When Taverner invited you to trust her, count your spoons. And if you didn’t bring spoons, check she hasn’t planted one on you, to have you arrested for theft later.

Sid looked about. The sky was clear and blue, and summer added glint and sparkle to multiple surfaces: car windscreens on the opposite bank, the railings on bridges, and the many small corners the river wears from moment to moment. She said, “This is where you bring people when you don’t want anyone to know you’re meeting them. Which, by the way, calls into question the security of the location. If even I know about it, I mean.”

“Oh, if I’m meeting anyone here they’re by definition unimportant, don’t worry your damaged little head about that. Now, small talk. You and Cartwright are an item, I gather.”

“By ‘gather,’ you mean it’s on file.”

“And how is he? We were dreadfully worried.”

“Yes, my turn to offer advice? When you use that phrase, that you’re dreadfully worried, if you could match it with a show of concern? Tone of voice, facial expression, whatever. Something suggesting sincerity.”

“Quite the spitfire, aren’t we? I seem to remember you as being more . . . pliable. Or is this a side effect?”

“Of being shot in the head? It’s too small a test group to say. But if you’re volunteering to swell the ranks, I’ll hold your jacket.”

“Let’s get back on track before we both say something you’ll regret. You were telling me about Cartwright.”

“He’s fine. Better than fine. We’re just waiting for the all-clear.”

“Yes. Good. That’s not happening.”

This with an equal stress on every word, the way she might address an infant or a shop assistant, the better to ensure no ambiguity slipped through her net.

Sid waited a beat, then said, “He’s fully recovered.”

“If you say so. But he’s not fit for active duty. Never will be.”

“He’s not a field agent—”

“It’s a technical term, and it covers Slough House. Let’s not beat about the bush. Cartwright isn’t coming back. His next medical report will draw a line under his career. After that, he’ll need another path to tread.”

The scene still glittered in the summer sun, but its dazzle was all hollow now, bright with empty promise.

“Also, to be clear, his injury was not incurred in the line of duty. Just because you’re poisoned by a pair of Moscow hoods doesn’t mean you were doing your job at the time. Cartwright was out of hours and off the books. If he’s hoping for an active service payout, he’s barking up someone else’s tree.”

“If you think River joined the Service for the benefits, you don’t know him one bit.”

“Still,” Taverner went on, as if Sid hadn’t spoken, “he can always share yours. Though of course, given how well you’re looking, it’s possible you won’t remain signed-off yourself much longer. How do you think that’ll go down at home? You heading back to the Service, Cartwright sloping off to the job centre?” She tilted her head to one side. “I can see him as a PE teacher, actually. He’d look good in a tracksuit, and he’ll relate to teenage boys just fine. On the right wavelength.”

“And you’re telling me this why? To save you the trouble of having somebody type a letter?”

“Oh, this is a call I’ll be making myself. Why should the underlings have all the fun?”

Sid stood. “It’s been a total pleasure. Let’s not stay in touch.”

The bridge was waiting for her. She’d use it to put as much of London as possible between herself and Diana Taverner.

Who said, “I thought you were the smart one.”

Sid paused.

“But you’re going to walk away without hearing the rest.”

“No, I just want you to get on with it. I can do without the gloating.”

“Sit down.”

“Talk first.”

“It’s not complicated. You do something for me, and I clear young River’s path back. Which might not be what you want, and it’s nothing I give two damns about, but it’s what he’s desperate for and we both know it.”

“Back to Regent’s Park?”

“Christ, no. To Slough House. Where he belongs.”

“Like I say. A total pleasure.”

This time, she got a few yards.

“Wait.”

She waited.

“You’re very sure of yourself.”

“You’re the one wanted to meet.”

“That doesn’t mean I’m offering blank cheques.”

“Suit yourself.”

Another yard. Then Taverner said:

“He’ll have to have training wheels fitted. And unlearn everything Lamb’s taught him.”

This time, Sid turned. Her smile as she approached the bench might have looked sweet, to anyone but Taverner.

“Keep talking,” she said.

“This is fucked.”

Which was Al speaking. Avril didn’t necessarily approve of the phrasing, but she couldn’t argue with his assessment.

“It is what it is,” she said. “Isn’t that what we’re supposed to say these days?”

“Yes,” he said. “But what it is is, it’s fucked.”

Having risen late, they were showered, dressed, hungover. CC had spent the night but was up and out now, gathering provisions; even so, the pair were huddled in the backyard, a tiny breathing space for potted plants and a bin, so they could formulate a plan, or lament its absence, without Daisy overhearing. If the muffled conversation of the pipes scaling the wall was a guide, she was currently in the bathroom.

Avril’s head was clanging too—her body regretting the Bushmills. She said, “Maybe the Park will do the right thing. There’s always a first time. And we could all do with some extra income. CC’s not wrong about that.”

“I’m not a charity case,” Al said.

None of them were. That wasn’t her point. Poverty came in different sizes, and it wasn’t like they were using food banks, but she, at least, was browsing the Reduced to Clear shelf when there was no one around to notice. They weren’t poor the way poor people were poor, but they were poor the way middle-class people were, and that felt poor enough—four former agents, a fistful of medals between them, none of which could be displayed in public, and their joint assets wouldn’t pay a deposit on a flat in central London. With their degrees they could have gone into banking, politics, industry, and it was bolted-on they’d be looking at a twilight spent in second homes on the coast, the odd cruise, instead of shivering each time inflation took a bite from their pensions. None of which made CC’s plan more sensible. But it gave her—gave all of them—a vested interest in its outcome.

Besides, it was happening. If she retained anything of her training, it was to bend to the inevitable rather than break herself against it.

Al said, “We all love the old idiot, but this is dangerous, not the quirky caper he seems to think. From what I’ve heard, Diana Taverner’s ruthless. You think she’ll stand for a half-arsed blackmail attempt?”

“But there are four of us, as he pointed out. Safety in numbers.”

“Or a buy-one-get-three-free tragedy. If we’re all in the same car that goes off the same cliff . . .”

Then it’s not a string of coincidental deaths. Just one sorry accident.

She said, “First Desk won’t sanction mass wet work just to avoid headlines. It’s not the seventies any more.”

“Doesn’t have to be. CC thinks he’s running an op, that he’s got his old crew back together, but we don’t work like that any more. Christ, I need a piss break on a supermarket shop. Can you see the four of us scamming the Park? And then there’s Daisy.”

Yes, there was Daisy. Who had suffered most in the aftermath of Pitchfork; who had quit the Park within a year, an extended leave of absence—medical reasons—becoming permanent. She’d then dropped off the map, and to Avril’s eternal shame it had been months before she noticed, so weighed down had she been by her own baggage. Coming to terms with the human cost behind a supposedly successful operation; learning to live with the nights during which Dougie Malone’s face, words, acts, hovered like a mobile over her sleepless head. Ever since, the knowledge that Daisy had spent that time lost inside the ever-diminishing circles of her despair had added to the baggage: all those unanswered calls she had allowed herself to forget about, the ignored emails put down to Daisy being in one of her moods. It had taken Al to bring her to her senses. She’s moved out of her flat, he’d told her. I don’t know where she is. And all the reasons she’d given herself for Daisy’s silence had melted.

Her first port of call had been the Park. We have a duty of care, she had said. Daisy’s one of ours.

Not any more she isn’t, came the reply.

“. . . Avvy?”

“I’m thinking.”

A noise from the front door was CC returning from the shops. Lack of noise from the pipes was Daisy, no longer in the bathroom.

She said, “Remember what they used to tell us before we headed into joe country? Nine times out of ten, nothing happens. Odds are, this will be one of those times. The Park’ll think CC’s a crank and ignore him. We wait it out a few days, then go home. Everything back to normal.”

“I can only admire your optimism.”

“And Al? Two words. Incontinence pants.”

“Not living that down, am I?”

“Not while I draw breath.”

They went back inside, leaving the plants to plot amongst themselves.

Taverner said, “Someone’s trying to extort money from the Park.”

It took Sid a moment to catch on to this, as if a lifeline had been thrown which went wide, and her arms were still flailing about. “What?”

“Extortion. You know, give us all your money or we’ll hoist dirty washing up your flagpole.”

“You can’t be serious.”

“I certainly can. You think it’s the first time this has happened?”

“Hardly. But why tell me? What are the Dogs for, if not to sic on trespassers?”

The Dogs: the Service’s police force, ostensibly to keep personnel on the straight and narrow, but all too often used to nip their ankles to remind them who was boss.

Taverner said, “That thing about using a sledgehammer on a nutcase? I wouldn’t want to be accused of going in heavy on a pensioner. No, this can be defused with tact and sensitivity.”

Which suggested that Taverner wouldn’t be doing it herself. “And you want me as your go-between?”

“It wouldn’t be the first time.”

“But the last time ended well.” She couldn’t stop herself rubbing her head, feeling the groove, like a dancer who can’t resist the beat.

“Don’t underestimate yourself. Just because you screwed up once doesn’t mean you’ll do it again.”

“I didn’t screw up, I got shot. There’s a difference.”

“If you say so. Doesn’t look a huge one from the gallery.” Taverner raised fingers to her lips, as if expecting a cigarette to materialise, then seemed to realise what she was doing. She lowered her hand. “But that’s by the by. You’re empathetic, you get on well with people. I know this. It’s in your file.”

“I’m touched.”

“So in the absence of any other candidate, you’ll do.”

Sid said, “You said pensioner. You know who’s doing this?”

“I know who he is.”

“He told you?”

“That would be lax, wouldn’t it? No, the demand came through anonymously on an email account set up for the purpose. On a public access computer in a public library.”

“Which was traceable.”

“And libraries have CCTV, yes, or some do, which sometimes work. He was unlucky, I’ll give him that. But not as careful as he should have been. He’s fortunate he picked a gentle soul like me to play with. Else he’d be waking up in Rwanda, with a barcode where his head used to be.”

“So you caught him on camera typing out this email?”

“Near enough. I have footage of a former agent leaving the public library in question within five minutes of the email being dispatched. Do the mathematics.”

Sid said, “You found all that yourself?”

“That’s right, while drinking a cup of coffee made from beans I roasted with my own fair hands. Of course I didn’t do it myself. I’m First Desk, I have staff. Who follow instructions and then forget they received them. To all intents and purposes, what I’ve just told you is strictly between us.”

Sid doubted that. Being ordered to forget something was on a par with being told to stop feeling itchy. But Taverner had been in charge so long, she’d forgotten her word wasn’t natural law. This was how empires fell, and also TV presenters.

There was activity on the Thames, one of those polka-dotted tourist boats that either undermined or underlined the franchised nature of contemporary art, depending on how ironic you were feeling. Sid’s eyes were drawn to it as it reorganised the surface of the water, causing what looked like widespread turbulence but which soon settled back into the same old patterns. “What does he want?”

“The clown in question is threatening to go public with one of the messier stories from our recent history. Unless we make his life a little more comfortable.”

“And you think he’s a nutcase.”

“Trying to blackmail me, that’s a medically recognised symptom.” She turned to face Sid, giving her a full hundred watts of well-meaning. “But I don’t plan to trample him into the dirt. The truth is, he wasn’t treated as well as he might have been. And it’s possible I’ll find a way to augment a pension somewhere down the line, or at least make sure he’s not actually destitute. But it won’t be in response to threats.”

“You can’t tell him that yourself?”

“What, turn up in person? Don’t be ridiculous.” She dipped into her bag and produced an envelope. “This is a be-good payment, not a fuck-you fund. Enough to pay his way around the big city for a few days, where he’ll be coming to deliver his proof into my hands. Details to follow.”

“And where exactly do I find this mystery man?”

“Oxford. His name’s Stamoran. Address and so on in the envelope. I’ll trust you not to siphon off any of the cash.”

“I’m flattered.”

“But let’s understand the ground rules. Do the job, and Romeo gets his heart’s desire. Scribble outside the lines, and I’ll make it my business to upset both of you. A lot. Are we clear?”

They were clear.

And also done.

Taverner watched the younger woman walk away. Sid Baker evidently hadn’t known that Cartwright’s future had been wrapped in black ribbons, which meant either Lamb hadn’t passed that news on to Cartwright, or Cartwright hadn’t shared it with his lady love. Just as well Taverner had taken the belt and braces approach; just as well, too, that Baker hadn’t questioned why the reward on offer was so large, given the low-level nature of the task. But then, few of us argue ourselves out of a wage hike; and besides, if it was clear that Baker would sooner put her Spook Street days behind her, it was equally apparent that she’d bite any bullet to keep Cartwright happy. Taverner understood Baker better than the young woman suspected. Besides, she’d been on Spook Street long enough to know that our first betrayal is always of ourselves.

As for Charles Cornell Stamoran—who had once led a crew known as the Brains Trust—whether this was his first betrayal was moot; that it was going to be his last, all but certain. It would, though, be in a good cause. Old he might be, but Taverner didn’t believe in writing people off because they were old. She believed in writing them off because they were no longer useful, and that shit could happen at any age. And given her current needs, Stamoran was demonstrably useful.

The polka-dotted boat had gone. The Thames had erased its passage. Tossing her imaginary cigarette and gathering her bag, Taverner similarly vanished into the ebb and flow of London life.

Erin said, “I’ve not seen him since yesterday lunchtime. I mean, he’s a volunteer, it’s not like he has to clock in.”

Traffic was light on the westbound A40, the weather perhaps persuading people to stay where they were, for fear of jinxing it. River had come through London with his temper no more frayed than the average city driver, about ten degrees short of psychic meltdown, and was now in the countryside, or its urban edge, where the cows and sheep were so used to cars they probably had provisional driving licences, and continued grazing for anything short of a seven-vehicle pile-up.

“Do you have his address?”

“No.”

“Does anyone?”

“Well, someone will . . . Look, I’ll call you back. Is this to do with the missing book?”

“I just want to talk to him. Thanks.”

He ended the call while overtaking a coach and his phone rang again immediately. Louisa. He’d ignored her earlier, fearing another sensitive assessment of his physical and/or emotional well-being, but couldn’t avoid her forever. They’d shot bad actors together, and this formed a bond, the way—if they’d been in different jobs—navigating a tricky spreadsheet might, or unjamming a photocopier. Besides, a friendly voice. He could do with a boost.

She said, “Lamb says Taverner’s kicked you off the pitch, probably as a way of applying pressure. So I’m wondering if she’s got you doing something dodgy in the hope of getting reinstated.”

“. . . Lamb said what?”

“River, you’re not doing anything stupid, are you? We know Lady Di can’t be trusted.”

The coach was in his rearview. If he slammed on his brakes it would plough right into him, finishing off the job those Russian berks had screwed up. Instead, he accelerated, finding space on the inside lane while rescrambling Louisa’s words into something he could make sense of. “Lamb told you Taverner’s fired me?”

“You’re not coming back, she says. No clean bill of health. I’m sorry.”

He carried out a mini-medical on himself: brain, internal organs, limbs. He was fine; he was fucking brilliant. More to the point, Taverner wasn’t trying to squeeze him, so what was going on? “And you got this from Lamb?”

“Who got it from Taverner. Shit, you didn’t know? I thought . . . Ah, fuck it. I could have been more tactful.”

A drunk monkey with a water pistol could have been more tactful. River wondered if this was what working for Lamb did to you: wore away your gentler instincts, leaving you pumice rough when breaking bad news. “He might have been . . . Shit.”

He might have been anything: lying his eyes out, having a laugh. Laying the first breadcrumb in a trail that would lead off a cliff. With Lamb, you never knew. And even when you did, it didn’t help.

“River?”

“I’m fine. Driving.”

“Look, I’m sorry, I—”

“Talk later.”

The coach was history.

The sun was still climbing the sky, which was still blue. Yesterday, driving this way, all had been fine and all had been dandy. He’d been planning his comeback, the degree to which he’d impress Taverner and have her waxing the tiled floors at Regent’s Park, the better to host his reflection on his triumphant re-entry. By the time he’d been heading home his mind had been full of the O.B., and the dirty pictures hidden on his bookshelves. And now, third time of passage, he’d just learned that his career had flatlined; was so dead his best friend assumed he already knew about it. Maybe he should find another route home, in case bad shit started happening.

His phone rang again, Erin, with Stamoran’s address and phone number. He fed the former into his satnav while Erin not so subtly probed for an explanation. When she rang off, clearly not thrilled, he dialled Stam, but got no reply. Then he contemplated calling Lamb, seeing if he could find out precisely what Taverner had said, but concluded he’d sooner French kiss a wet dog. If Taverner planned to squeeze him, so be it: He’d suffer being squeezed—squoze?—if it would settle his future. Talking to Lamb would hardly help, “Cry me a you” being his standard consolation for River’s woes. And meanwhile, River had his grandfather to worry about: what crap Stamoran was pulling that required the O.B.’s name to be tarnished, and what it was that had really been hidden in the box-safe. Enough to be getting on with.

Not going back—his career over—the Park a fantasy—that could wait.

Meanwhile, the satnav took him what felt like all the way round Oxford, largely because that’s what it was, then dumped him in a tailback heading towards the centre, along a road lined with hoardings advertising mattresses, warehouse-sized electrical stores and too many traffic lights. Somewhere in the distance, a train was crossing a bridge. He called Sid but it went to voicemail so he fiddled with his radio instead, and finding nothing he wanted to listen to sat and fumed, the traffic nudging forward, his temperature rising, the morning crawling by.

It was the train before the one River noticed, or even the one before that, that Sid had arrived on. An otherwise admirable TV series had recently suggested that London/Oxford rail travel was a complicated business, but Sid simply caught the tube to Paddington and hopped on a direct service. While the train did its job, she read the notes Taverner had included in the envelope: Charles Cornell Stamoran’s home address, which was off the Botley Road—a short walk from the station—plus a reminder of where the Spooks’ College was, where he mostly spent his days, and the safe house on Woodstock Road he had nominal care of, tidying up between periods of usage, replenishing stocks, binning junk mail. If she hadn’t been on medical leave she could have accessed Park files and found out more, but the list of places he might be had to suffice. The envelope also held a thousand pounds in box-fresh twenties and a burner phone. She resealed it, and spent the rest of the journey gazing through the window at the sun-flattened landscape, noting the absence where Didcot Power Station’s chimneys once stood. The train carrying her forward was also taking her back: She’d studied at Oxford, and this scenery was familiar. The cows were probably different, though.

At the station she cut under the railway bridge and within five minutes was at Stamoran’s address: a terraced house that backed onto the river, and had three doorbells replacing a knocker. Stamoran was on the top floor, or was when he was in, but Sid rang twice, and then a third time, to no avail. She thought about ringing one of the other bells, but if he wasn’t there, he wasn’t there. The college was her next best bet; on the other hand—the city’s geography returning to her—she could reach the safe house by walking up the canal, and the weather made that an attractive prospect. Besides, Stamoran was old-school, she was guessing—a pensioner, Taverner had noted—and safe houses were where the old-school hid themselves when sins had been committed. And also, maybe she should give herself time to wonder whether she was doing the right thing.

Cash was cash, and presumably wouldn’t be unwelcome. It also suggested that manacles weren’t awaiting him, but Stamoran had attempted to extort money from the Park, so any amount of fucking him about was within the acceptable range of responses. And now she was part of that, her own agenda weighted by self-interest, or River-interest at any rate. Did she want River back at the Park? Not as much as he wanted to be there. All of this, though, was after the event. She was hopping to Taverner’s beat. There was no point leaving the dance floor now, even assuming the choice was hers to make.

Up the canal, across the meadow, over the railway line once more. A northwards stroll through suburbs where the houses were large, the pavements leafy. The safe house itself was on a busy thoroughfare heading out of the city, and was small—a cottage—and out of place, though might be cosy inside. Walking past on the opposite pavement she saw no signs of life, though all that meant was, there was nobody hanging out of a window or sitting on the roof. A wheelie bin had the next door’s number painted on it. A hundred yards up the road, whose curvature meant the manoeuvre couldn’t be spotted from the house’s window, Sid crossed the road and headed back.

Charles Cornell Stamoran. She was composing a mental picture: greying, benign, a corduroy jacket. Spectacles on a chain. He’d ride a bike—a black step-through with a basket up front—and tuck his trouser turn-ups into thick woollen socks. Would open the door when she rang the bell and pretend to be someone else, but the elbow patches would give him away. His home address: Spook Street. Here’s a grand and here’s a phone. Someone wants a word. That’s if he was even here in the first place. One way of finding out was ringing the bell, though even as she did so she was thinking, And this is what you do in a safe house, right? When someone rings the bell, you answer it. The days she’d spent in David Cartwright’s study flashed through her mind, in the snug nest she’d made, surrounded by his books. When anyone approached the house, she’d made herself invisible. Answering the door was not on the agenda.

But this one opened. “Yes?”

It was a woman of sixty or so, Sid’s height, with grey hair, wearing jeans and a thin lilac sweater, and whose eyes glittered in a way Sid found disturbing, not least because she recognised their sparkle. It was the same look she caught in her reflection, on mornings when her wound felt recent. The phantom bullet lodged in her head pulsed. “I’m sorry, I might have rung the wrong—”

“Daisy!”

A man appeared at her shoulder: an apologetic figure was Sid’s first thought, a little raggy of sleeve, a little threadbare at the hem. Bullish of frame, reddish of face, whitish of hair. And also, to her stifled satisfaction, wearing a pair of spectacles on a chain around his neck. But his gaze was piercing. He placed a hand on Daisy’s forearm, adding irritation to the sparkle in those eyes. “You are?”

Good question. She hadn’t thought to prepare an alternative identity, though why would she want one? If what Taverner had said was true, it was this man who needed a cover: He was the one shaking down the Park. She said, “My name’s Sidonie Baker. If you’re Charles Stamoran I’ve something for you.”

“How did you know to find me here? No, don’t answer. It’s obvious.” Something went out of him: air. As if he’d been keeping himself aloft on hope, and had just seen that blow away down the road.

“May I come in?”

He thought for a moment then stepped back, drawing Daisy with him. It was a narrow hallway, barely worth the name. Turn right, you were in the front room. Daisy released herself from Stamoran’s grasp and slid away to give Sid space, and as Sid entered she became aware—nothing extra-sensory; it was too small a house to keep secrets—that they weren’t the only ones within, and this required a quick rethink. Stamoran wasn’t alone. Was Taverner aware of this? The window’s view of the front road was shrouded by a net curtain; there was a two-seater sofa, and a hint of last night’s alcohol in the air. Maybe Stamoran was guilty of other crimes, like running a Service safe house as an Airbnb, but that was another rabbit hole she’d best not tumble down. She turned to ask a question, and it was on her tongue, all but spoken, when her legs were whipped away from her and for one turbulent moment she was unconnected to the floor. And then she was on it and Daisy was on top of her and there was a blade at her throat, and that was it; that was all there was.

Roddy would have been the first to admit he had an excellent singing voice, though a long-established difficulty in finding the second meant he generally refrained from breaking into harmony when the slackers were about. Their loss. His gift for leaving even the roughest melody glazed in honey deserved its own label: a pity R&B was taken—Rodz Beatz—but there was still room for Roddy-pop. R-Pop. Hard not to see queues forming outside stadiums. Slough House, obviously, was never going to make it onto his touring schedule, but a combination of headphones, sheer joy in his own talent, and the fact that Wicinski was a sneaky bastard meant Roddy was in full song—had his Hojo working—when Lech returned from lunch.

“Losers and boozers,” he was crooning. “Something something fingernails.”

“Working on your theme song?”

Ho’s attempt to look like he was simultaneously upright, working and not singing resulted in his headphones and his mobile hitting the floor at not quite the same time, as if an experiment in gravity had just failed.

“Yeah, and you’ve found your . . . cheese grater.”

“Nice one.”

“Because that’s what you shave with.”

Lech rubbed his cheek: Funny, he could go for hours not being reminded about the mess his face had become—Londoners were unfazeable, by and large, when they weren’t online—but seconds into Ho’s company and he was contemplating bandaging himself up like the invisible man. “Did you ever think about a vow of silence? Or maybe having your vocal cords pruned?”

“Jealous. I went pro I’d have groupies. You’ve just got rubberneckers.”

“Ho, your voice sounds like you’re feeding an arthritic seal, very slowly, into a cider press. The only way you’ll draw groupies is if you sign up for assisted dying.”

“You need your ears plunged. My voice puts the Ho in ‘hot.’”

Lech, who would have quite liked to put the Ho in hospital, said, “You should leave your brain to science. They could do with one that’s not been used.”

“Yeah, and you should leave yours to . . . the Tiny Brain Museum.”

“Good comeback.”

“They could do with one that’s really small,” Ho called after him as he left the office and trudged up to Louisa’s, where he begged her to reconsider the No Squatters policy. Otherwise he might kill Ho.

“Sounds a plan. No, I meant killing Ho.” Too late: Lech was already booting up the PC on the spare desk, which Louisa hated anyone calling “the spare desk.” “It makes it sound like people can plonk themselves there whenever they feel like it,” she’d said more than once, usually to Lech, which proved her point. And just to underline how his presence was disturbing her, his phone rang.

“Yeah, what?”

“You working on the safe house register?”

“Is that what we’re calling it? A register?”

River, who’d spent the past two hours watching the house where Stamoran lived, said, “Shit, I don’t know, call it what you like. But are you at your desk? Can you look at the list?”

“Yes. Or no. But okay. Hang on a minute.” He pulled the spare chair from under the spare desk with his foot and crashed onto it while waiting for the spare screen to stop grinding grey and ask for his password. Meanwhile, Louisa had guessed it was River he was talking to: This probably had as much to do with the rarity of Lech’s receiving a call as it did with River being on her mind. “Ask him where he is,” she said.

“Where are you?” Lech asked. Then said, “Oxford.”

“What’s he doing in Oxford?”

“What are you doing in—you know what, hold tight.” He tossed the phone to Louisa, and used his newly free hand to slap the PC, a verified method of making it feel like you were speeding things up.

“What you doing in Oxford?” Louisa said.

“Not much. What you doing in Slough House?”

“Same. Why d’you need to know where the local safe house is?”

“Seen all the tourist stuff. Did you know they have an underground train here, taking books from one library to another?”

“Sounds like a lot of effort to avoid a bit of work. Who’s in the safe house?”

“Until I know where it is, hard to say.”

“What you up to, River?”

“Just tracking down someone who knew my grandfather.”

“Is this for Taverner?”

“No.” There was a moment’s interest when a passer-by paused at Stamoran’s door, but whoever it was was posting junk mail, and moved on swiftly. “I’m on medical leave, remember? From which, according to you, I’m not coming back. So I’m hardly doing anything for Taverner. Has Lech accessed that file yet?”

Lech had not done so.

“Have him call me back,” River said, and disconnected.

Rude bastard.

River, in his car, stiff from lack of movement, wouldn’t have disagreed. He knew he was blaming Louisa for delivering bad news earlier, even if it were bad news he hadn’t wasted a moment disbelieving—had he known all along he was kidding himself; that his nine-day time-out wasn’t something to be shaken off after a few months’ convalescence? It was hard now to see such wishful thinking as anything else. But that was what life could do: turn you upside down, shake your pockets empty, in the time it took to bite your tongue. One moment everything’s fine. The next, your mouth’s full of blood.

Stamoran’s door opened.

River turned his head lazily, careful to avoid sudden movement, but the young woman emerging from the house couldn’t have cared less, pulling the door shut behind her and setting off without a glance in his direction. There were three doorbells, and nothing about Stam suggested he might be playing house with a young woman, so this must be one of the other tenants. He turned back to his phone. Try Sid again? And say what? He didn’t want to tell her where he was; there was too much backstory involved. He hadn’t told her about the box-safe, about Stam’s saying it held porn, and would have to explain why he hadn’t mentioned that before going on to mention why he’d decided Stam was lying. Simpler to leave it until they were together again. There was a lot about being in a relationship that was easier to control when you weren’t actually having a conversation. It was possible that this attitude needed work, but he was busy. His phone chirruped but it was a text, spam. Did he want to change energy supplier? No, he wanted Lech to call back with the safe house address. Lech, though, was still having trouble with his PC, and had pretty clearly pissed on his picnic when it came to seeking help from Ho. He looked at Louisa, who pretended not to notice, but he didn’t dare call her on it because she was annoyed about something. Then Catherine came in, distributing worksheets, and noticed the atmosphere.

She said, “Please don’t say you need mother-henning too. It’s bad enough dealing with Ashley’s protracted adolescence and Shirley’s . . . being Shirley.”

“Relax,” Louisa said. “No one’s asking you to interfere.”

Catherine might have responded—should have done—but settled for giving Louisa a look which Louisa, on a roll now, also pretended not to notice. Lech thanked Catherine for the worksheet with his eyebrows, then thanked God or whoever when the PC accepted his password and blinked back into blankness, a possible precursor of emerging into life. Catherine, meanwhile, crossed into Ash’s room and laid the paperwork on her desk with a quiet, “Here’s your worksheet,” ignoring Ash’s muttered “What is a fucking worksheet, anyway?” but failing to quash a mental response as she carried on up the stairs: It’s a record of tasks completed in hourly time slots, as you very well know, these last five words rendered in italics. Frankly, she did not understand how she managed not to drink. Sometimes it beggared belief that she managed not to scream.

Lamb was in his office, unshod feet on his desk, his socks looking like someone had glued the contents of a puncture repair kit onto a dish-rag. One of his eyes was closed, but the other tracked her movements as she entered the room, giving her the feeling of having wandered into a reptile enclosure. The smell, too, was perhaps not dissimilar. He didn’t speak as she laid several days’ worth of emails in his in-tray—he preferred them printed out: you can’t rip up a screen—but before she was safely through the door again he said, “What’s pissing you off now?”

“I’m fine. Thanks for asking.”

“Yeah, stroll on. I can read you like a . . .”

“Book?”

“Election flyer.”

“Nobody reads election flyers.”

“My point exactly. So save me the bother and say what’s drunk your lunch.”

She said, “This place is a war zone. They’re all at one another’s throats. And I’m sick of trying to keep the peace.”

“So let ’em tear each other apart. Slough House, it’s pretty much our mission statement.”

“They’re people, not lab mice. Damaged people. We can’t just let them bite chunks out of each other.”

Lamb rolled his eyes, both open now, heavenwards. “Are you there, God? It’s me, Jackson. Got one of your do-gooder types here, meaning well and causing trouble.”

“I’m not the one—”

“You’ve been here long enough, you should know what brings this lot together. Grief, pain and shit-the-bed clusterfucks. You want them putting on a united front? Be careful what you wish for.”

“I’ll go, shall I?”

“Thought you already had. Oh Christ, what now?”

What now was Louisa, coming in as Catherine exited. “You asked what Taverner had River doing.”

“I know I did. Your job’s to provide answers, not restate questions.”

“He’s in Oxford. And he’s asked Lech where the local safe house is.”

“So maybe he’s after a freebie dirty weekend. Show young Baker round the ivory spires, then take her up the Woodstock Road.” He adopted a pious expression. “Not that I approve of either fornication or freeloading, but really, Guy, if this is jealousy-driven cock-blocking, I hoped for better from you. Cartwright’s made his choice. Deal with it.”

“There’s never been anything between me and River.”

“If you say so.”

“And what business is it of yours anyway?”

“It’s an admin thing. Any staff fraternisation, which is like workplace incest with added frotting, I have to write it up for the Park.” He adopted his muggins-here expression. “I don’t get paid extra for that. It’s one of the burdens of rank.”

“You write it up?”

“Well, Standish does. Amounts to the same thing.” He reached inside his shirt to palpate his belly for a satisfying few seconds, and when he withdrew his hand it was holding a cigarette. “Not that I’m opposed in principle, you understand. I mean Cartwright, I’m pretty sure that ship’s sunk, but if you’re planning on resurrecting your love life, go for it. I’m a great believer in getting back on the bike.” He studied his cigarette for a moment, then put it in his mouth. “In this scenario, you’d be the bike. I hope that was clear.”

“I’d appreciate a little less commentary on my private life,” Louisa said, after a long pause.

In his plumpest tones, Lamb said, “I do apologise. If I have a failing, it’s that I care too much. Always been my Achilles tendon.” He frowned. “Unless I mean elbow.”

“Can we get back on track? River’s in Oxford, he’s up to something and he won’t say what. You wanted me to step in to whatever it is he’s doing. So I’m going to Oxford to help him. Okay?”

“I’m all for the hands-on approach, but I can’t help wondering if he’s not beyond help. We already know he’s for the chop, plus there’s the whole post-traumatic stress bollocks.” He was rummaging around his desk, looking for a lighter. “You ask me, the best you’ll be able to do for him is pat him on the head a little.” He mimed the action, to be sure she got it. “If you can reach his head, that is, with him curled up in the faecal position.”

“Foetal.”

“As I just explained, he’s probably shitting himself.” A lighter came to hand, and he clicked at it vigorously. “But sure, yeah, why not. Take a day’s leave.”

“It would count as work,” Louisa said. “It would actually be work.”

“Get Standish to sign you off.” The lighter flared into flame and he torched the end of his cigarette. Then tossed the lighter over his shoulder, where it hit the wall with a bump and dropped into shadow. “And send me a postcard. No, write me a postcard, saying exactly what’s going on, then call me up and read it out to me.”

“Woodstock Road.”

“Wicinski can find you the number.”

He could and did, and had already phoned River, while attempting to extract some basic information, like: What are you up to? But River wouldn’t say, though he did at least remember to offer thanks. Then programmed the address into his satnav: It wasn’t far from the college, or at any rate was on the same road. The program promised roadworks if he attempted the direct route so he headed out to the ring road, mentally repeating Lech’s question as he did so—what was he up to? Chasing down Stam, to find out why he’d lied about what was in the box-safe. And also, to discover what had actually been in the box-safe; his grandfather’s final secret, which was River’s own legacy.

In his last days, the O.B. might have thought a plastic toy from a cornflakes carton a secret worth preserving. He had lost his grip on his former realities. When River visited him at Skylarks, the home he’d been moved to when home itself grew strange, his talk had been of boys’ own derring-do, the details dredged from a mishmash of school days stories and gung-ho war films. All his life, River had listened to the old man talk. Never before had he wanted the flow of words to dry up. Now, skirting Oxford with the post-lunch traffic, he remembered something his grandfather had said years back, when he still controlled the narrative; words that seemed freighted with hindsight, a warning that hadn’t been heeded because there were no precautions you could take against growing old, no tradecraft that would keep you out of senility’s clutches. Old spies can grow ridiculous, River.

He’d meant if they hung on too long. Old spies outgrow their covers; their sleeves become tattered and worn. They forget which lies they’re meant to tell, which truths they ought to conceal, and that was without the added pain of dementia, of cells fraying and losing their connections, of neural networks decaying into leaderless chaos. Once, his grandfather had haunted Molly Doran’s archive, secretly adding conclusions to the unfinished stories collected there. In the end, conclusions were beyond him . . . Best to tune out gracefully, and accept retirement’s package of slip-ons and slacks and slow movements. Better the boredom of the afternoon nap than to stay on the road too long and end up a laughing stock. Old spies can grow ridiculous. Old spies aren’t much better than clowns.

River wondered what the O.B. had hidden in his box-safe; wondered what Stam, another superannuated spook, might be up to, and wondered what Sid was doing, and this time called her, but after three rings went to voicemail again. Then he thought about trying Louisa and apologising for being a bastard, which brought to mind what she’d asked earlier, about whether he was on a job for Taverner. What had that been about? If old spies grow ridiculous it was because young spies wove their lives into knots, forever making cat’s-cradles out of straightforward lengths of string. No wonder there was so much pent-up rage in Slough House, an observation which summoned images of Shirley, who right then was rousing herself from a post-lunch torpor and pondering a raid on the kettle. Given her long-standing and devout refusal to contribute to the kitty, out of which teabags, milk and coffee were purchased, such expeditions were fraught with the possibility of conflict. Good. She paused for a moment, wondering how a worksheet had appeared on her desk, then headed for the kitchen, hoping for an unattended teabag, and found Ash boiling water in her usual manner of addressing such tasks: as if it were below her pay grade, and God only knew how it had fallen to her.

On seeing Shirley, she said, “What do you think Louisa’s up to?”

“What makes you think she’s up to anything?”

“Duh, because Lamb said she was? That she’s a big decision to make?”

“Lamb,” said Shirley, “likes to fuck with our heads. It’s what gets him out of bed in the mornings.”

“Yeah, I don’t want to think about Lamb in bed. But do you know what I do think? I think she’s leaving.”

Shirley had paid little attention to what Lamb had said, feeling only the usual relief that a meeting was over. Meetings were not among the things she was best at, and there were some things she’d never done—skateboarding came to mind—that she’d probably be better at than meetings if she did try them. But Ash had a point: Maybe Lamb hadn’t simply been sowing discontent. Maybe Louisa had something going on.

Ash said, “And if she’s leaving, it’s because she’s got somewhere to go. And I don’t mean some bank or estate agents’ or shoe shop. I mean a proper job.”

Shirley couldn’t see Louisa working in a shoe shop. “You reckon she’s going back to the Park? Because I hate to break it to you—”

“That wouldn’t be a big decision, would it? She’d do that in a heartbeat. We all would.”

Shirley said, “But none of us are going to. And Louisa won’t get a reference from the Service that’ll get her into security work.”

“Yeah, but really, she’ll need one? I mean think about it. This might not be what we signed up for, but it’s still intelligence work, isn’t it? We’re still—you know—spies. For anyone working the night shift on an industrial estate, watching the vans don’t get nicked, this’d be a career highlight.”

(“Career highlights are for other people,” had been a recent Lamb observation. “You lot have career landfills. And not the sort some idiot’s buried an old laptop in, with a fortune in bitcoin, but the stinking horrible kind, swarming with gulls.”)

“More fool them,” said Shirley.

The kettle boiled and Ash poured water into a mug, saying, “You’re hundy missing the point. Your average security company’d shit themselves to get a real-life former spy on the books. Reference or no reference.”

“Except the Park’d deny we ever worked for the Service. If we claimed we had, I mean. And . . .”

And who’s going to believe us? was what she didn’t say. Who’s going to believe you and me, that we’re spies? Even Shirley didn’t believe it half the time. She reached for the teabag tin.

“Uh, not yours,” said Ash.

“Yeah, I gave Catherine a fiver this morning?” She fished out a bag, dropped it into the cleanest mug within eyeshot, and reached for the kettle. “So if Louisa’s actually been offered a job worth having . . .”

“It’s with someone who knows her. Probably ex-Service themselves, but not Slough House. And anyway, a fiver? I gave her a tenner last week. We all did.”

“That what she told you?” Shirley shook her head sadly. “I knew she was skimming, but I didn’t think she’d be so blatant. You might be right, though. About Louisa being recruited by someone she knows.”

“And what I was thinking is, if they’ll take her, they’ll take us. Why not? I mean, I’m younger, and I didn’t fuck up the way she did. And you’re . . .”

Shirley waited.

“You’ve got bags of personality. Is she really stealing from us?”

“Catherine? Yeah, but we’re not supposed to talk about it. Lamb covers for her. He’ll pay you back. Just speak to him when no one’s around.”

“Yeah, okay. So, shall we ask Louisa, then?”

“. . . Sorry, what?”

“About who’s approached her.”

“. . . You mean . . . What, just ask her?”

“There’s a better way?”

“Well, we could follow her. Or get Ho to bug her phone or sack her emails. Or . . . yeah, no, you might be right. We could ask her.”

Weird, though.

“Shall we go together?” Ash asked, and Shirley had the sensation, strange to her, of being the adult in the room.

“Well, first I’m going to drink this,” she said. “Then I’ll probably have a wee. But yeah, okay, let’s do that.”

Though the odds of Louisa telling them anything were on a par with Lamb refunding Ash’s kitty money. Besides, Louisa had left; was on her way to Oxford to find out what River had got himself into, and was currently barrelling down the M40, enjoying not being at work, the day’s tasks postponed. And also finding space to think about her words to Lamb earlier: I’m leaving. That, it seemed, was how decisions were made; you opened your mouth and heard them happen. She should speak to HR, make it official. Talk to Devon again, and sort details out: holiday entitlement, pension arrangements—company car? That provoked a giggle. Company car . . . This from a woman who’d financed the deposit on her flat by stealing a diamond following a shootout with Russian gangsters. She was on a slippery slope. She’d have a savings account next, an investment portfolio. Start inviting friends around for dinner parties. Start having friends.

Mostly, though, what loomed large was not what was waiting but what would be left behind. At first, Slough House had felt like a temporary punishment, a proving ground where she’d redeem the desperate error that had seen her exiled from the Park. And then there’d been Min, of course, and a period during which the future had been something waiting with open arms rather than with its hands behind its back, concealing weapons. After Min died—after that, life had been a blank page on which she’d written nothing, but which she hadn’t been able to turn. Paralysed—affectless—she might as well have been at Slough House as anywhere else, and the future became something to be postponed, which she did by existing only in the present. Things were different now. Things always became different if you left them long enough. That sounded too basic a lesson to have taken her so long to learn, but you live your life in the order it happens, and here she was now; heading to Oxford, her last outing as a slow horse. Who would she miss? River, maybe Lech. She’d think about Catherine, but doubted she’d see her again. As for Lamb—well, she’d think about him, too. But in time, all of this would be fragments; the years patchworked by memory until she could no longer fit actions to places, faces to words. When she looked back on this, it would be like reassembling broken crockery. Even if the bits fitted, the cracks would remain.

But she’d keep in touch with River, if only to piss him off, a process that would almost certainly be brewing again this afternoon—whatever he was up to, he didn’t want Louisa to be part of it, that was clear. And while this was true, what was mostly pissing River off right then was the traffic snarling up the road in front of him, caused by another set of temporary lights. Cars harrumphed and spluttered like retired colonels. River had a headache coming on: not a symptom—he was fine—just a reaction to road hassle. Satnav showed the safe house on the left, a few hundred yards away; before he reached it there was a turn-off where there might be somewhere to park, so as soon as the traffic allowed he pulled into it. It turned out to be a lane running past a children’s playground towards tennis courts, and had bollards in place and stern warnings posted. He parked, thought about leaving a note under his wiper—Spy on call—and headed round the corner on foot. The safe house was one of a row of cottages weirdly placed on this main road; cars were crawling past it like a rolling surveillance mission. Little point doing a walk-by, he’d only draw attention to himself, so River ignored the drivers, stopped at the door and rang the bell. For the moments that followed he had the strange sensation of everything coming to a halt—that he’d been part of a busy flow and was now outside it; that something had happened before he’d arrived—but whatever that was about, it dissolved inside a greater frustration: that nobody came to answer the door. He rang again, then knocked loudly. Same response. He dropped to a knee and peered through the letterbox, but all he could see was a small empty hallway, and a half-open door leading into the front room. He caught no sense of movement, no trace of sound. The house felt vacant.

River stood, turned and faced the traffic. Faces stared back: Of course they did. Where else were people going to look, stuck in a queue of cars? He pulled his phone out, called Stamoran, then held the phone away from his ear, straining to catch a telltale ringing inside the house, but there was nothing, and when he put the phone to his ear the silence was dead and echoey, as if he’d stuck his head inside a dustbin. He had the feeling he was running out of options, with a long drive home ahead, and no answers found. Automatically—his fingers doing the work by themselves—he called Sid again. Now might not be the time to explain where he was, but now was definitely the time to hear her voice. The numbers did what numbers do; they reached out and rang bells in someone else’s life. In between one breath and the next a connection was made, and Sid’s phone rang. Soon it would go to voicemail again. But until it did, he could hear it twice; once in his ear, and once behind the door he was standing by. And because this made no sense at all, he disconnected, then did it again, and then did it again, each time expecting a different result.

But the ringing didn’t stop.